HOW-TO: Create a Safe Classroom Blog Using KidBlog.org

Example student blog.

In the age of social media, some students find reading and writing in the form of text messages, email, wiki edits, status updates, and blog comments more engaging and meaningful.

In Ontario, blogs are first referred to in the Grade 6 Language Curriculum. At that level, students are asked to evaluate the effectiveness of opinions and issues in blog form. By Grade 7 students are asked to consider their audience when writing in blog form. Our curriculum reflects the reality that blogging is an emergent genre of text in the changing landscape of the written word.

As a blogger and educator, I feel it is important to introduce this genre of writing even earlier than our curriculum currently requires. There are multiple reasons for this:

• Blogs are an opportunity to respond to media texts by commenting on the posts of others.
• Early exposure to "netiquette" and online safety issues help to keep children safe.
• Students present their writing for others to enjoy (one of Ruth Culham's "6+1 Writing Traits").
• Blogs appeal to a variety of learning styles because they are highly visual and collaborative.
• Assistive technology programs like WordQ and Kurzweil integrate nicely with blogging.
• Blogs are an exciting platform that few students get to experience in the classroom setting.

I have searched the internet high and low for a student friendly blogging solution. I originally thought that I could just create a "Blogger" account for my class, but I encountered a problem with Google's terms of service (TOS) that prohibit children under 13 years of age from using the service.

Enter KidBlog. KidBlog is a safe blogging service that uses a WordPress (a very popular and reputable blog publishing platform) like system. The service is designed for students and teachers with many security and privacy settings, but it keeps things very simple and tidy.

I am going to take you on a small tour of my class blog setup and provide a few tips.

Setting up your class blog

1. First, you'll have to register yourself as a teacher at KidBlog.
2. After registering and logging in, you will find yourself on the main "dashboard" of your blog configuration. Navigate over to the "Settings" tab.
3. Under "Settings" you can change the appearance of your blog by selecting the "Themes" sub-tab. There is a small variety of pre-built themes you can choose from that may suite your teaching style.
4. Under the "Posts" sub-tab you can change the privacy settings for your blog by selecting the different options. I recommend setting the privacy such that only you and your students can see the blog when logged in. This prevents anyone from the public from accessing anything.
5. Under the "Comments" sub-tab you can also make some changes to the privacy settings. Again, I suggest making sure that only you and your students can post comments on each other's blogs.
6. Now you need to load some of your students' information into the blog so that they can all have their own unique page and login. To do this, select the "Users" tab up top. Click on the "Add New Users" sub-tab to input usernames and passwords for each of your students. 

There are many others settings to fully customize the blogging experience for your needs, but those are all of the basics.

The blog dashboard, where teachers get a great overview of their students' blogging activity and where changes to settings can be made.

Managing your class blog

Login window.

• You and your students can now login into your blog by going to its URL and selecting "Login" at the top right. You will then get a login window with a pull-down list of each students' name and a spot to enter their password.
• As the teacher you have access to many more features than your students. When you click on the "Control Panel" button you will enter the blog dashboard that provides you with a summary of everything happening on the blog. This summary includes links to active posts, draft posts, and recent comments. You can moderate the activities of your students using this interface quite easily.
• For more advanced moderating, you can click on the "Posts" and "Comments" tabs to see a complete list of activities.
• You can edit or delete anything created by your students at any time.

Feel free to post your experiences blogging in the classroom and any questions you may have in the comments to this post. Happy blogging!