Today seems to be a day for thinking towards the future…
We’ve been blogging now for 18months and some children have asked about setting their own blogs up. Now we have class blogs and some children have access to write on these. We also have the children’s blog which everyone has access to, but the main problem with this is that after 10 posts, the previous ones are on page 2 and lost into the ether. After-all, no-one clicks on page 2 do they?
I could give them all access to their class blog and then when they blog they put their name in the tag to differentiate it, but each yeah I’d be moving them al around as they move class. I don’t fancy that!
So I want to use WordPress to setup the blogs instead. Now I don’t want to force a blog on every child as the thought of writing more than they need to would scare some children. So I want to do it as a sign-up system. So my initial thought was a google form where the children fill in some options, I look at the answers and then manually setup a blog for them. They could agree to a set of rules before they get the blog turned on and we could decide them with the children of course.
There is probably a plug-in or something that I could use, but here are some things to think about…
- Do I set the children up as contributors so that they can write on the blog – and then I’d have potentially hundreds of blog posts and comments to approve…or do I set them up as a higher level so that they post and manage it themselves – with possible e-safety issues when comments come in
- Is there an automatic way for new blogs to be listed somewhere? There’s no point making new blogs if no-one can find them. I could have a page called ‘Blogs by children’ but would I have to manually make a list of the blogs or could it be done automatically?
- What happens if a child adds photos of themselves to the blog? If the blog was called ‘Amy’s blog’ then photos would have to be banned
- Should the children be allowed to choose their own themes and widgets?
- Should the children’s blogs auto-tweet as well?
Of course I might be thinking of all of this and then it turns out that only two children want their own blog, but still, if two children want it then I should be providing some way for it to happen. I wouldn’t want to be the person forcing them to use non-school systems or worse still, blocking it entirely.
So, if you are a WordPress expert, tips are welcome! If you are a teacher, what do you think? Should children have their own blogs or am I just giving myself more work?
A really interesting post Ian. I set up individual blogs for all the children at Leamore and I asked myself pretty much the same questions, but couldn’t find the answers – well the answers that I wanted anyway
Individual blogs are listed as links on each class blog, but how I wish this was an automated process!
I used a privacy plugin, so that only authorised users could access the individual blogs which in the interests of e-safety was a good move, but from an audience point of view was lousy! So yes, the children can publish photos of themselves on their blogs, but can then only share with their family members.
Anyway, no advice from me sorry. But I am really interested to see what you decide!
Ian, To get around the 10 post problem, you can alter the number shown on the front page in settings. I am considering upping mine as more contributors have recently been added.
As for individual blogs. Nightmare. Don’t have them as yet as I’m only just getting staff into blogging. Children will come next but into the future.
I’d love to know what others advise.
Great post. Facisinating to see this one evolove over time.
A couple of ideas, for what they’re worth…
Is there the possibility of pairing up students so that work has to be approved by someone, but that someone can be another student?
There are a couple of plugins that return lists of all blogs and all posts – I remember having a look a couple of years ago. Have a rummage on the wordpress site.
Could theming / widgets be an earned privilege?
Looking forward to see where this goes now!
Just a few comments that may (or may not) help.
My daughter (7) just asked if she could have her own website – after much discussion she decided that she would review films she had seen recently, we sat down and discussed what the structure of each post should be – essentially a rating out of 5, a brief plot summary – what she liked or didn’t and a link to the trailer. Despite the fact that she writes well and extensively she struggles to file long posts – the barrier being the ability to type as fast as she could think… so i’m not sure if it will continue for long.
Comments are moderated and the audience is fairly low so not an issue. But from experience (in a non-education environment) simply schedule when you will review and approve and only commit to publishing every few days.
Some of your automation needs may be met by ifttt.com it can use posterous, tumblr and wordpress which may help help you auto-tweet to a single class or school feed as well as quickly alerting you to any safety issues. It may also allow you to find a form of publishing that gives them access to publish but not see comment until approved.
We are a Google school so we use blogger. Blogs are private and and invite-only. No solution on the listings, sorry!
Hi Ian,
PrimaryBlogger can do all this for you, we built it especially for these purposes. We’ve made PrimaryBlogger as safe as possible for anyone to use, with keyword monitoring, privacy features, moderation, full human moderation and spam protection.
I’ll list your points with their solutions below:
1. Page 2 syndrome – you can overcome this by enabling a plugin that will automatically load more posts when you scroll to the bottom of the page under the current pages.
2. You could do as you suggested, or ask the children to just fill in our sign up form and be taken through the entire process, ending up in a choice of a wizard mode to set up their blog or more advanced options. Alternatively you can make a template blog, which would have the exact layout you wanted for all your children and possibly a blogging rules page etc and then assign the template to all new blogs. The only problem with this is you’d have to send me all the blog names you required and I’d have to set them up for you. Then you’d have to add the users afterwards manually. It is a good idea if you want the blogs set up the same though.
3. It’s always best to keep a hand in their blogs, even if it’s just to help them when they’re stuck. I’d recommend making yourself the administrator on the blog and set them as an editor so they can just write and change a few minor settings.
4. There’s no way currently to list all your blogs to everyone, yet you’ll see a list when you’re an administrator in the admin area so you can quick switch between the blogs. If you were to do it manually, you could also add a widget to your main blog that used the RSS news feeds from the other blogs showing recent news from all blogs. That would be a better solution in my opinion, but you would have to add the feeds manually unfortunately.
5. We moderate all posts after they have been written, but in the first instance it would be advisable to go through e-safety with your pupils and double check they know what they should be doing on their blog. You could make a blog rules page for them.
6 + 7. These are entirely user choice. Giving pupils the choice to set their own theme allows some personalisation, possibly making them more interested in blogging. Twitter, would they have their own Twitter accounts or would you tweet from one central account?
8. Getting pupils interested is all about making it exciting for them in the first instance. If you let them start asking questions on their blogs and using polls etc, it starts becoming a social hangout as well as educational tool and they take ownership in that.
If you’d like to chat in more depth, send me an email and I’ll go through it all with you. ed at primaryt dot co dot uk
I blogged for a year with a year 5/6m class and now in year 4 all the children have their own blog. They use it like their own eportfolio which the world can access. They love it.
Note: these ideas may not be helpful, but…
I think that you could do a lunchtime thing for the people who want their own blog and tell them how to do it, and set up with them.
Then make them administrators. If they were only contributors, they would get really annoyed by how much they couldn’t do.
If they see some rude comments, I think – and this may not be very practical – that they just do whatever they like with them, not putting them on. They need to learn that when they grow up, people won’t be there to protect them.