Student blogging was presented by Matt Allen and his students. Blogging is a yearlong project for this class. The teacher moderates all student blogs and ok's posts and comments before they are published. There are many different blogging platforms available for educators and students; this presentation focused on using kidblogs. It helps if the teacher has a healthy, active PLN. #comments4kids is a great hashtag to seek support and feedback for your student blogs from other educators, students, etc.William Chamberlain was noted for being a huge advocate of #comments4kids.
When blogging, students go through the writing process (pre-writing/ rough draft, self edit/ revise, peer conference, edit/ revise, teacher conference, edit/ revise, and publish). All comments get published to student blogs as long as they are not spam. Students without internet access at home write their rough drafts with paper and pen; I was happy to hear they also promote using the public library for internet access.Students blog about the same topic all year long and topics range from Justin Bieber to Ancient Egypt to Video Games. Mr. Allen is considering having students change topics every trimester next year.The main point of blogging is not to monitor students' spelling and grammar. It's about learning how to write and how to express oneself. Rubrics are not used to grade student blogs. Students must write a certain amount of posts but they don't need to be any specific length; just well composed.
I think this is a great approach to blogging and I hope I can bring these ideas back to my school.
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