Tutorial #3: How to Create a Classroom Blog"
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Classroom Blogs are a great way to get your students excited about writing. Click here to see how we use our blog.
For those of you new this area, a blog is a sort of online journal. You can help students create their own username and password in order to keep their entries anonymous and safe. When you post a journal topic (blog topic) online, students can login to the blog and post their response. Blogs are easy to setup and maintain, and are a great way to get students engaged in a real-world writing exercise!
Step 1: Create a Free Edublogs Account
Click here to sign up for your free Edublogs account. After you choose a username, insert your e-mail address, and agree to the terms and conditions for eduBlogs, choose the "Gimme a blog!" option.
Next, you can choose your Blog domain (the address) and Blog title (our title is Mr. Kennedy's Class Bloggers). It's ok to use your name for the title, but when it comes to student names, make sure not to use them online for privacy. After you have finished signing up, they will send you an e-mail to complete your registration.
Step 2: Customize your blog
To customize your blog and begin writing topics, first log-in to your Edublogs account. After you complete your registration, Edublogs will send your password to your e-mail.
Once you login, this should be your control panel view:
If you click on the "Appearances" tab on the left hand side, you will be able to choose what your blog looks like. There are many different designs to choose from.
The second major thing you can change under "Appearances" are manipulating "widgets" or accessories on your website. Without spending the time here on this page, you can browse through these widgets and see which ones would be useful on your class blog page. One of my favorites is the "tag cloud".
Step 4: Add Users
Before your students can begin responding to your blog topics, you must add each student as a "user". Click on the "Users" tab on the left side and choose "Add User".
You have to add one student at a time unless you upgrade to a paid subscription. Come up with a unique username for each student. This is one of our favorite parts of using the classroom blog. I have students pick their own usernames (i.e. jedikid, supergirl, soccerdude).
*IMPORTANT - Set each student's role to "Contributor". This will allow them to read and add comments to the blog.
If your students have their own e-mail addresses you can enter those as well. The only real benefit for students using their own e-mails is that they will receive a notification once their blog entires have been "approved" (more on that later). My school district has an e-mail set up for each student, even though they are not able to access those e-mails until high school.
The students will receive an e-mail to set up their account and password. Now the each individual student can log in to the blog, change their passwords and options to the blog.
Step 4: Add New Blog Posts
Now you are ready to start adding new blog posts. To do this, click on the "Posts" tab and "Add New" on the left side.
There are MANY options to adding a new post. You can play around with many of the formatting features on this page, but here are the main things you want to do:
1. Add a title
2. Add a decription
3. Add post tags (tags are one word descriptions of your blog post that briefly describe your post)
4. Add a category (optional)
5. Publish your post
Once you have published your post, students can log-in to the blog using their username and password. They then can "leave a comment" on any post that they wish!
Click here for some blogging prompts for your students.
Now that you have completed your classroom blog, you can use it often to help students write in a very real world scenario. In his book, Boy Writers, Ralph Fletcher advocates for the use of blogs, text, e-mail, and chat to help motivate students to write in real world settings.
For one final note, it is of utmost important parents and myself to keep students anonymous online. Make sure that you take every precaution to keep your students safe! Don't ever use real names in the blog postings. Talk with your students about the importance of not getting too specific and personal online.
If you have any questions about blogging, please e-mail me!
If you would like more information about classroom blogging, please click here.