Classroom Blogging Basics

A "blog" as described by our good friend Wikipedia:
A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
And as described by CommonCraft:


There are several advantages to having a blog for your classroom that are difficult to provide through any other medium.

  • Creates a unified place to post important reminders and upcoming events.
  • Creates a place to show student resources for projects and/or assignments they may be working on.
  • Allows students to communicate with one another through comments, which are easy to moderate from any computer.
  • Makes students that miss a class able to be held accountable for the work they missed.
  • Creates an searchable record of the class and their interactions.
  • Allows students with different learning styles to access information in different ways.
  • They are FREE, EASY to create, and highly CUSTOMIZABLE.

One of the best parts of blogs is that there are so many choices when creating one. The following provides several sites that have excellent free accounts available and also have excellent support for both beginners and experts available through a simple search.

Google Blogger-www.Blogger.com
You can always count on Google to provide a top notch service for free. As of this posting this blog is hosted on Google's Blogger platform. With a multitude of templates and an extremely intuitive interface, Blogger provides a perfect platform to create a classroom blog.
EduBlogs-www.EduBlogs.com
EduBlogs is a blogging platform created specifically for Teacher and Students. They have a feature rich free account as well as premium accounts that pack on additional excellent features. The education based environment means less of a chance of your students being exposed to questionable content and also means a strong backing from the educational community.
Tumblr-www.Tumblr.com
Highly customizable service for those of you looking to have your content really *pop*. Slightly less intuitive then the others but many excellent blogs are built on Tumblr. Could lead to some questionable content but if done right Tumblr is an excellent service.
WordPress-www.WordPress.com
One of the most widely used blogging services and for good reason. Not only does WordPress have on of the largest support communities on the web, it also allows provides those that are familiar with HTML and CSS nearly endless creative possibilities. If you plan on making a professional blog that will be visited by more than just your students, WordPress is the way to go.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of options. Got any better ideas? Leave them in the comments! Feel free to post any questions or comments.

Got Suggestions? Email me! justinhanger+classroom20@gmail.com
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