I know that many of you probably use blogs as a writing format for your students. I've been meaning to get to this all year and it just hasn't happened yet. We have been having some issues with technology at the school on top of everything else (nothing new) but I'm going to give it a shot this week, anyway.
Kidblog is one of the most popular sites that I have found for students to write their own blogs. It is private, easy to manage (from the looks of it) and also has options for classes to blog with other classes.
In Health, we have been talking about stress and coping with stress. I will be having my students write a blog post about what stresses them (or kids their age) and what techniques they can use to alleviate their stress. It's a simple task, really. However, I'll be having them read and comment on at least 2 or 3 of their classmates' blogs as well. I hope that they'll enjoy the writing format as a change of pace, and perhaps gain some new ways of coping with the various stresses of being a young teenager. I also hope that they will gain even more insight into purpose and audience.
I'll let you know how this little activity goes and how the students enjoy it. I'd love to have my students write for a global audience, but with privacy issues, that can be tricky. However, with the control that Kidblog offers, it would be possible to team up with another class or classes and give a wider audience to our students, rather than just their classmates.
FYI, I teach in Prince Edward Island. Below is a shot of our town (taken last fall, there's a little snow around still). The other 2 photos are also taken in the area where I live and are just for fun! My brother and husband went kayaking a couple of weeks ago on a freakishly warm day (notice the bergs;)
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| Souris, PEI |
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| Such a calm day! |
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| Hubby on the left, little brother on the right... |
Aaaaannyway...
Please, leave a comment if you'd ever be interested in teaming up to allow our students to read each others' Kidblogs. It could be very cool! I'll know by the end of the week, hopefully, if student blogging is something that I wish to do more of, or if our technology (or lack there of) is going to be my reason to say, "Not this year." I'll be sure to share the outcome and my decision, though:)
Do your students blog? What site do you use?
I would love to have our kids blog for each other - I know nothing about it however and am just investigating 'blogging platforms'... I live in cardiff, wales...let me know what you think - I teach year 5 - age 9/10 email [email protected]
ReplyDeleteWe blog!!! We use Kidblog too and we live in Bermuda. Would LOVE to link up with other classrooms. We've been blogging for a couple of months now and I think we're just about ready to open up to others :) I teach third grade (Year 4 in Bermuda) 8/9 year olds. Right now I use the blog for writing homework posts - and the kiddies also have a blogging idea chart that they can use whenever they want to do their own posts. One child is writing a serial story that the whole class is reading; some just document their lives. I made sure to set it up so that I have to approve every post and comment (good thing because I've had to go over the etiquette rules a couple of times with some of them!) No-one else in our school is doing a blog :( so we would love to link with some other classrooms around the world :) If you want to see some of the stuff we've done I've blogged about it at the links below
ReplyDeletehttp://funinthefours.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-just-love-my-class-blog.html
http://funinthefours.blogspot.com/2013/03/2-blog-posts-already.html
http://funinthefours.blogspot.com/2013/01/class-blog-here-we-come.html
http://funinthefours.blogspot.com/2013/01/we-have-lift-off.html
Sorry for so many - I'm just so excited at the thought of joining up :)
Lynn
My class uses edublogs here in Morocco. They leave each other comments each week - but we have a small class and it would be great to have them read what other bloggers their age are writing!
ReplyDeleteI have 1st - 4th who are blogging.
Heidi Raki
www.rakisradresources.com
Wow! Thanks so much for all of your responses. This is awesome:) So, we'll be starting our blogs this week. I'd like for them to have a little practice before opening things up. When does your school year end? Our kids go until late June. If we use this month to get our bearings with Kidblog, maybe we could look at sharing in early May and having students comment on each other's blogs. We could even talk about what we may be doing, topic-wise. Can you imaging classes in PEI, Wales, Morocco and Bermuda blogging together? Pretty cool, if you ask me! Grades 1-7 - also pretty cool:)
ReplyDeleteMy email is [email protected].
Let's think about how we could do this before the end of the school year! It could be fantastic for addressing audience and purpose AND then we'd all be ready to go next year with our new classes because things are so much easier when you've done them once!
Feel free to email me if you want to chat further, or just comment here!
Krystal
Krystal
I talked to my kids about the possibility of having other people read their blogs and they are very excited. Let me know whenever you guys are ready. My school year goes until the 3rd week of June.
DeleteHeidi Raki
www.rakisradresources.com
We're on holiday right now so I surveyed my kids via the blog :) So far the answer is an overwhelming "yes". They're dying to connect with other classrooms. Has anyone done it at all? I'll have to go on and check Kidblog to see how to open up our blog to others. I think we should start with an Introduce Ourselves post :)
DeleteLynn
I would love to be involved with this as well! I teach in Downers Grove, IL. I have 1st graders (6-7) years old. We use Kidblog and are getting 1:1 ipads for the next 3 weeks! I am going to have them blog A LOT!! Would anyone be interested in Facetiming? or Skype? Just to meet each other and put a face to the "blogging" world!?
ReplyDelete[email protected]
Nicole
A Frenzy of Fun in 1st Grade
I have a small group of 5th grade bloggers, and would love to connect with some other similar age students. This might help them to expand their blog topics, as they are mainly focusing on our school's students as their audience. We are new at this!
ReplyDeleteWe are in Charleston, SC. E-mail me at : [email protected] if interested!
We are blogging! This is something new that I have been trying this year with my students. We blog with edublogs as well. Currently they are blogging about books that they are reading independently. I have a 7/8 out in Ontario but if anyone is interested let me know!
ReplyDeleteIt would be so cute to mix grades as well.
Middlehood Madness
I am interested!!!!! We're in PEI and JUST started our blogs today. They seem fairly keen on it though. They did make it clear that they'd rather if they new that their audience was their age, rather than blogging with/for younger kids. I teach grade 7. Hopefully we can work something out! I started with Kidblog, but realistically, all they need is to have the url/code for the other students' blogs and they'll be good to go.
DeleteLooking forward to maybe partnering up Middlehood Madness!
Krystal
www.lessonsfromthemiddle.com
I am so interested! I saw your email above so I will email you with details. I can't wait to tell the students tomorrow! The urls will work great. Watch for my email.
DeleteWoo hoo!
Middlehood Madness
Yay! Super excited to have landed blogging buddies at my grade level! I can't wait until my kiddos have sufficient posts to have you read/comment! This is going to be excellent for building up my kids as writers, having a real live audience!
DeleteThanks everyone for your comments! This is awesome! Feel free to pair up with anyone who's commented here. I've decided to make this blogging adventure a collaborative project here on GTC for May - so stay tuned! In the mean time, please continue to post your info here so that people have an idea of who's interested and where they are. I'll be posting a Googledoc for people to add their info to, a little later on, so that all of our info is in one spot and so that we can choose our blogging partners!
ReplyDeleteKrystal
Kidblog is definitely one of the best blogging platforms around and personally having used it even to this date I know it can be used by anybody. That said and done I support the motion that students should use blogging as a format for writing because it will help students have their work viewed by the world audience. This can be very exciting for any student knowing that their work can be viewed by people from different parts of the world which can be very motivating to the student and as result drive them to be more creative in writing their blogs. It can also make them write quality stuff knowing that they are writing it for the world audience and not just their teachers so they need to be very impressive for them to earn a good reputation and attract a big audience.
ReplyDelete