For those of you thinking of creating a classroom blog to interact with parents, head over to Kathleen's post, A Guide to Involving Parents in A Classroom Blog. Hopefully, her advice will not only motivate you to get started, but also lead you down the path. Kathleen is an experienced blogging, so don't expect to follow all of her advice right away, but let us know which tips of hers you find most useful for a teacher just getting started with a classroom blog.
If you want to see Kathleen's class blog, you'll find it at: 4KM and 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School. There are plenty of blog posts, pictures, and links to explore and get ideas for your own class blog. Kathleen loves comments, so feel free to leave some on one of her posts. Note this class blog is really the collaborative effort of two teachers, Mrs. Morris and Miss Jordan, both 4th grade teachers, and, of course, their students.
On the sidebar of 4KM and 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School. you'll find links to class blogs and individual student blogs. The students have made made global friends through blogging.
Mrs. Morris' and Miss Jordan's class have been participants in the QuadBlogging Project. Definitely look into the culmination of one of their Quad projects, The Tale Trail Project. In this project, the Australian students in the two classes collaborated with students from Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, BC Canada, and New Zealand to write a sequential story, which they illustrated, and then combined into one oral reading.
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| Image at The Tale Trail |
You are right! Kathleen gave great advice about starting a class blog.I agree that educating the parents on the use of blogging in the classroom and encouraging them along the way will increase the use of the blog. I have to go and Diigo her blog!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing this! I would like to begin a class blog in the future, and have been looking for some guidance on how to do this. I love the idea of educating the parents about the blog, how to use it, etc. Would you suggest using comment moderation for the blog? I would be slightly concerned that parents may post things that I would not necessarily want up on the blog. I don't anticipate it being a major issue, however I always try to be mindful of the level of professionalism in working with my classroom community.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this Judy. As I progress in this class I am gaining more confidence with regard to the use of technology and am more open to trying new things. I would like to creat a class bog for my sophomore Civics course in which both parents and students could participate.
ReplyDeleteIt is so true that parents (and students!) need plenty of guidance on blogging basics, including how to appropriately navigate and respond to comments. I just saved Kathleen's recommendations in my Diigo account -- I want to make sure I can return to those handy letters/guides that she's sharing via Creative Commons! As we've discussed prior, some teachers choose to use Twitter as a means of updating parents throughout any given school day. Is is realistic to attempt both a Twitter and a blog, or is it better to stick with a single platform? I do recognize that a blog enables a much richer conversation between students, teachers, and parents.
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