Class blogs - management, moderation and protection May 4, 2008
Posted by Al Upton in miniLegends.Tags: blog, blogging, Edublogs, elearning, learning, miniLegends, protection, student directed, student initiated, tutorial, web2.0
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I get many requests on the following content including one from Sue Waters caretaker of TheEdublogger. [Please use The Edublogger for the broader dialogue ... something I don't intend to cover here] This post isn’t conclusive or prescriptive but I hope it helps. Please feel free to add your ideas, suggestions and comments by clicking the title or ‘# comments’ link.
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Some ‘first steps’ for making a class blog student centered and directed.
For teachers new to class blogging who might find some/much of it a bit daunting at first, I recommend establishing a rotation system of students to contribute a post relating to any aspect (or summary) of their daily learning. I’ve previously used “The next student on the roll chooses any friend to create a post and enter it toward the end of the day” - or any time to allow more posts. Please note here that only one computer in the classroom is all that is needed for an effective blog.
The single class blog is administered, logged into by the teacher and accessed by the students.
An extension of this is to have individual pages for each student.
Create a new page (use the link on your dashboard or ‘Write’>’Write Page’), Title = ‘Our Blogs’ (or similar), type a few words eg “In the right hand sidebar are our individual pages”>Publish … Create a new page, Title = student’s first name eg Alphonso (then Beata, Chantrice etc)>Open ‘Page Parent’>select ‘Our Blogs’>Publish … and so on through the alphabet.
[Hover mouse over picture to read title. Click to open then back button to return here]
My class also have their own blogs. Please note they are Year 3s (8 and 9 year olds) and much of what we do is initial exposure/exploration of online identity, collaboration and networking. This requires them to have their own email addresses. For consistency, I maintain the same structure for domain names, usernames and passwords. An example could be the first 3 letters of first name + first 2 letters of last name eg hugwe The password can have an additional number followed by two random letters/symbols eg hugwe4w! Personal, unique, readily remembered and easily identifiable to those who need to know. BTW did you recognise this famous Australian - hugwe4w! ?
*** Please be advised that parental/caregiver permission (in accordance with school/district/state/government policy) needs to be obtained to use images and names of students ***
[An idea I've heard suggested is that the teacher creates a blog from their own username for each student - 'create a new blog' link is on the dashboard. I believe this is not as effective as the student will not receive notification of comments etc. It's also less empowering, possibly not conveying the sense of personally belonging to an online community.]
As my class have their own blogs, they now can have editorial rights in the class blog.
‘Users’>’Authors & Users’>scroll to bottom ‘Add User From Community’>
‘User E-Mail:’ (type in student email address used for their blog)>’Role:’
Subscriber = (can add a comment - settings can allow them to be the only ones)
Contributor = (can write posts)
Author = (some increased management control)
Editor = (can create a page)
Administrator = (everything)
I quite like my class to be editors.
Individual blogs are not necessary to add students as users and/or give them editorial rights. Emails and usernames are necessary but instead of clicking ‘next’ with the default ‘Gimme a blog!’ select ‘Just a username, please.’ NB gmail, hotmail and yahoo are preferred by Edublogs but I’d rather use the school addresses as Edubogs emails aren’t being filtered - it allows me to better manage my students allowing them as much freedom as I dare. Click the picture below for what you see when you ‘Sign Up For Free’.
Sue Waters suggests setting up gmail accounts with your name as an extension so that all emails come to you - this is certainly worth consideration. Kim Cofino (always learning) has outlined this strategy beautifully here. Sue also wonders if you can moderate student posts before they go live. At this stage there is much you can do (see next heading) but I’m unsure of an Edublogs feature that allows moderation of posts in this way. I look forward to becoming better informed and/or the introduction of ‘post moderation’.
Moderating posts.
Keep an eye on your class and students’ blogs. Go to ‘Presentation’>’Widgets’ and drag up ‘Recent Posts’. Check out ‘Posts’ in ‘Latest Activity’ in ‘Dashboard’. Inappropriate content can be edited and deleted via ‘Manage’>’Posts’/'Pages’. Lead discussion on being ’safe and savvy’ online. Trust.
Great post here (by Mrs Vass I assume) reminding me of a strategy I used last year. “It’s quite easy to keep track of what is being posted on the children’s blogs by using ‘google reader’, or something similar” Many Thanks ….. I also use Google Reader
Moderating comments.
‘Options’>’Discussion’ … includes the ability to allow comments or not, notifying other sites and trackbacks from them (or not), moderation queue, a spam blacklist of words - this includes words within words so be careful.
It’s important to remember that settings can be changed for individual articles.
See this picture for detail of more and commonly used features.
Managing comments.
‘Comments’>’Comments’ (for all comments that are currently online) or ‘Awaiting Moderation’ (for those that you have indicated eg ‘Hold a comment if it contains 2 or more links’ - see picture above). Also you will find here ‘Akismet Spam’ if you have installed it … ‘Plugins’>’Plugins’>’Akismet’>’Activate’ … this is well worth doing. ‘Plugins’>’Akismet Configuration’ to activate the key … check it out.
Moderating individual student blogs.
Students must have their own email addresses to have their own blogs. I ensure I am added as an administrator. All emails regarding comments will still only be sent to the student. So I ensure that all emails sent to them are forwarded to me. (Simply done with the whole class step by step) This also allows me to monitor their school email traffic. Students are aware of this as they are the ones who activate these ’safe and savvy’ measures. I periodically check that all students retain these settings. When I send a group email to my class, all students should appear in my inbox. If not, I follow it up.
Some more protection strategies.
Please consider the advantages of having an open and public forum. The above strategies allow this to happen. In addition …
‘Options’>’General’>’Membership:’>’Users must be registered and logged in to comment’ … I don’t check/tick this box myself.
‘Options’>’Privacy’>’ ‘ OR ‘I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors’ … I choose the former.
You might also like to consider adding a contact form … ‘Options’>’Contact Form’ … and then put ‘%% wpcontactform %%’ (without the spaces and apostrophes) into a post or a page. We created a new page and put this basic code in (the editor not HTML) - click here to view it.
When creating a post or a page you can also open ‘Discussion’ in the sidebar on the right to choose to check/uncheck ‘Allow Comments’ and ‘Allow Pings’ - notification of other sites you have linked to.
Below ‘Discussion’ is ‘Post Password’ … type in your password. Click the ‘pw?’ page/tab in the header (meerkats) for a demo. The password is ‘pwdemo’. 
Lastly,
remember to ‘Update Options’/'Save Settings’ for any changes you make.
Any requests, collaboration, deepening the dialogue and sharing … feel free to add and ask (comment here, email, twitter - alupton, skype - al.upton)
Cheers, Al
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Hi Al,
Thank you so much for this. Sue Waters added the link to this page on one of my posts in my blog. I have set up a personal blog in edublogs and have created a class blog in learnerblogs. At present I have not created any individual student blogs. I think I will have them add comments first in our class blog and if they want to create a post, they can email it to me and I will put it in the class blog. If some students get very keen then I will negotiate with their parents to have their own indiviudal blog. Is it better to use edublogs or learnerblogs for a student blog?
Hi tasteach (another Sue W) thanks for your comment
As I mentioned above, I don’t recommend individual blogs when starting out - this of course depends on each teacher and class. The class just commenting can work very well either on a post e.g. http://alupton.edublogs.org/six-words/ or on a page http://alupton.edublogs.org/hi/6-words/
I like the idea of students sending their posts to you via email but be wary of adding an extra step and double dealing. Blogging works well because of it’s expediency. Kids work well when allowed to make mistakes.
I recommend you move toward students posting about their own learning as soon as you feel comfortable. Believe me they will be ready! You still have the one class blog. You still log in and administer it. Try the rotation system.
I believe Learnerblogs are excellent for individual student blogs and Edublogs for class blogs. Thanks for the reminder - I don’t use Learnerblogs because for some anachronistic reason (that I’m still trying to change) they are filtered in South Australian government schools … last time I looked. Cheers, Al
Al,
Just wanted to answer Sue’s question:
Sue also wonders if you can moderate student posts before they go live. At this stage there is much you can do (see next heading) but I’m unsure of an Edublogs feature that allows moderation of posts in this way.
Yes, you can moderate posts before they go live if you have students as contributing authors on your blog (as outlined in my post). When the students write a post, the button that usually says “Publish” now says “Save for Moderation.” Then when the blog admin logs in, they see a list of posts “Saved for Moderation” and they can edit or publish as the see fit. So easy!
Thanks so much for sharing all of these details - what a fabulously thorough post!
Kim
Hi and thanks Kim
yes I’d missed that one as I go straight to editors for my kids .. maybe I missed it there as well
I would hope that an admisnistrator would be able to keep an eye on their blog for new posts .. ‘recent posts’ widget and scanning the dashboard help there.
Now what about being able to moderate kids posts which they create on their own blogs? That’s something I would like to see but I hope I’ve got it fairly well covered without guarantees or overloading myself.
And off that topic where has my avatar gone? I’ve uploaded it everywhere I can but it doesn’t appear next to comments. Oh well a bit of anonymity never hurts.
Cheers, Al
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Thanks for this post Al. I have my own blog and am in the process of exploring options for my students (Yr 7 girls school) . I use wordpress for my blog and was going to us it for the class blog also. I want my students to have their own pages - do you think I need to use wordpress multi user or would I be able to have their blogs running as pages off the blog I create in the standard wordpress edition? Did you send permission notices home for parents to sign? If so, what did you get the parents to sign off on? A lot of questions I know Al - I feel like I have come across this post at a fortuitous time as I need to bite the bullet and get started. Thanks for all of the advice you have offered in this post.
Jenny Luca.
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thanks Al, my class is voting on their blog name and identity today, we’ll be launching soon. your advice is very useful, I hope to put it to good use.
A great post! I have a couple of teachers in my ICT cluster trying out 21classes.com which is set up for easy management of individual student blogs. Have you seen it in action?
[...] I didn’t mention in my Tips On Blogging With Students post is that Al wrote his Class blogs - management, moderation and protection post in response to my email asking him to share his student blogging tips — and I’m so [...]
Al -
Sorry it took so long to reply to the comment you left on my blog! I actually have the students set as authors as described by Kim Cofino in the above comment. I set the blogs up in learnerblogs under my account and add each student to their blog. I agree that it takes some of the ownership away from the students, but at this point I can’t risk the possibility of a student posting something inappropriate on a class blog - it would result in no one being able to blog anymore in our school, I’m sure. Also, my students aren’t dedicated enough at this point to take the initiative to moderate their own comments - I only have them in class for 10 days at a time. I am of the mind that if the students learn how to blog in my classroom, they can take that knowledge home to create their own blog for personal use, which several of my students have done.
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Thanks very much for the great advice on this page. I am doing a research project this year, looking at ways that classroom blogs can be used to enhance home/school partnerships? My thought on comments would be to keep the comment function accessible to the public so that parents can use the blog in an interactive way. How are other people managing this? Do you let the public comment on your class blog?
Thankyou for this post, I will be able to direct colleagues towards your post.
Vikki (Angus, Scotland) http://victoriarodger.edublogs.org
Thanks for all the great information. How can I take all this in?
Hello,
I just joined the edublogs’ community by setting up a class blog with student blogs linked via our blogroll. Much of what I’m doing is trial and error at times (but only after research). From reading this blog, I will remove my individual student blogs and have my pupils login with editor privileges… include their own posts and page. This is so I can moderate more effectively. I’ll set up linked emails as suggested. However, before I do this, I’ll need to consult my grade 5 pupils about altering our blog early in term 2. Our blog is http://altan.edublogs.org
TTFN
Great to see you are back at it.
Blog:
I use edublogs for my class in desktop publishing. They get their assignments through their blog and i grade their blog every week to see if they are keeping their daily journal up to date. This allows the students to do some work at home if they choose.
Dolores Conley
Tug Valley High School
West Virginia