Kid Blogs and Student Led On-Line Book Clubs

Earlier this fall I was talking about deciding on the best forum for my students' on-line book reviews. While I ended up choosing Google Sites, I am thinking that Kid Blogs may have actually been a better fit, at least as an initial introduction to on-line book reviews and reflections of learning. While younger students are still getting used to blogging I have realized that it can be quite time consuming for basic posts and I have not been able to integrate in many of the features that Kid Blogs does not have and that I saw as a reason to choose Google Sites over Kid Blogs.

However, with experience I am seeing how Kid Blogs would be an excellent introduction to blogging and probably does have everything I need, especially for 6th and 7th graders. With Google Sites, even though the announcement page works as a micro-blog, I don't like how all users are able to edit posts, rather than just being able to post a comment (one difference between wikis and blogs).

When I started to do my first multi-age on-line book club of the year, I decided to have students do it on Kid Blogs. While we did on-line book clubs last year, this was different because I decided to have 8th graders lead the book club discussions. In partners the 8th graders did a post for each discussion day and the 6th and 7th graders added comments to discuss with their group. It has been going very smoothly. As I had known from before, it was so easy to set up and the students were quickly able to transition to using Kid Blogs since they were already familiar with posting and writing comments.

For now, I would recommend Kid Blogs vs. Google Site and re-evaluate when it seems like students are ready for more than Kid Blogs has to offer. This will change year to year as students arrive at my classroom with more previous experience with technology. Earlier this year our director and a couple of teachers wanted to do some book blogging with 2nd and 3rd graders, so I helped them set up a Kid Blog, and they have loved it. Once those students are 6th graders, they will already have a foundation in blogging and may be ready for a more advanced format - or not. I guess I will just wait and see each year, considering which technology tools are available and which are the best match for the students. Always so much to experiment and explore with educational technology!

The Student Blogging Saga Continues

Ever since my initial set backs with starting individual student blogs last winter, I have been thinking about different options. After our initial Blogger glitch, we signed our school up for Google Apps Education edition to at least have access to services such as email and Google Docs. I had been disappointed that Blogger was not included in that package. Yet I thought that it was okay - Blogger could wait until this year when my 8th grade students would all be thirteen. Most recently I talked about Blogger vs. Kid Blogs. I had decided that I wanted to go with Blogger. Yet, I was still going back and forth. I considered that even though Kid Blogs were not as visually appealing, maybe it was a better option to launch blogs. Then I realized that in an effort to simplify blogs for students, there were not any capabilities to put tags, labels, or widgets, which would make it hard to use them the way I wanted to. Thus, it was back to Blogger for my preferred option for 8th graders. I thought about how I could use Kid Blogs for 6th and 7th graders solely to record books read this year with a review/response post.

Today was the big day (again) to set up student blogs via Blogger. I was thrilled. I set up my own blog using my Google App Education edition email to make sure that it was going to work. It was all slick and smooth just like when I set up my personal Blogger accounts using a Gmail address. However, once the students were in the room it was not long before I started having flashbacks to last year's roadblocks. Rather than going from the initial information page to the blog set-up, it prompted students to verify their accounts either via a text message or voice call. I remained calm and told the students that they could do their independent reading while I went around to each student individually with my cell phone in hand to get their verification codes. I thought that was a pretty smart way to not panic and be a problem solver - that is until about the sixth student when an error message came up saying that the number provided had already verified the maximum number of accounts allowed per phone number. As a last ditch effort I had the other students click on a form to explain the difficulties with verifying the accounts.

As I had a little more time to reflect during the day, I was ready to go with Kid Blogs tomorrow. I did not want to go through any more hassles with Blogger. Then I remembered that a teachers in one of my summer school classes talked about a professor using Google Sites in another one of her classes. I went into my education edition account and saw that Google Sites was an option. I was able to quickly set up my own site and played around just a little bit. I realized that they did have an option to add on announcement page(s) that functions essentially like a blog.

Tomorrow I will start the next phase of the process - setting up student Google Sites. In some ways it seems like it might end up being even better than Blogger for an educational context. It will just take me a little bit to get familiar with its different capacities. Hopefully it will be a case of "Third times a charm!" If not my students will probably get pretty skeptical any day that I tell them it is time to set up their very own blogs! I don't see any way that there will be glitches with Google Sites though since it is included with the education edition...