Kidblog

I am very keen on having the children in the classroom using blogs. Kidblog is a great site to use where each child can have their own blog with the teacher moderating it. This is all free, it has been set up by teachers for teachers. A great web 2 tool for the classroom.

Kidblog is safe:

• Teachers have administrative control over all student blogs and student accounts.
• Your students' blogs are private by default - viewable only by classmates and the teacher.
• For "semi-public" blogs, set up guest (e.g. parent) accounts that require a password to view students' posts/comments.
• Comment privacy settings block unsolicited comments from outside sources.
• Kidblog does not collect any personal information from teachers or students.

Quadblogging

Today I was in an online session with Terry Freedman. I have always admired the work Terry does - he is the editor of The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book.

Doug, who was also in the session mentioned quadblogging. I had never heard of it before but have now investigated it and what a wonderful global tool for schools to use.

Schools register and are then put into groups of four. One of the four teachers becomes the co-ordinator for the quad. In the first week all of the people in the quad will visit the blog of one of the schools in the quad and leave comments etc. In the second week another school will be the focus and so on. Children will see a boost in traffic on their blog as well as comments - this gives the children the impetus to have their post ready and online.

Here is a video to explain quadblogging.

ICT in schools

This term I have been volunteering to work with teachers and children in the schools which were badly hit by the earthquakes here. One of the things I have found is that some schools which had not used blogs before are now wanting to use them, why? ...

Children here were off school for up to three weeks (some for more). During this time many families moved away from the city to stay with people from other parts of New Zealand. The children attended other schools. Many of the schools these children attended had blogs and, so when the children returned to their own schools, they wanted to have a classroom blog too!! How great to have the children pushing their teachers to get on board!!