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
18 comments
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
minis Become Editors not Administrators March 8, 2008
Posted by Al Upton in miniLegends.Tags: Al Upton, dashboard, Edublogs, miniLegends, protection
26 comments
A test … as I’ve noticed a couple of ‘password change’ requests … all miniLegends have been changed to become Editors of their own blogs.
The features they have access to are in bold below.
• Dashboard - Dashboard, Promote Your Blog
• Write - Write Post, Write Page, Write Tweet
• Manage - Posts, Pages, Uploads, Categories, Import, Export, Subscriptions
• Comments - Comments, Awaiting Moderation (0), Akismet Spam (0)
• Blogroll - Manage Blogroll, Add Link, Import Links, Categories
• Presentation - Themes, Widgets, Current Theme Options
• Plugins - Plugins, Google Analytics, Akismet Configuration
• Users - Authors & Users, Your Profile, Your Avatar, Blog & User Creator, Invites
• Options - General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Privacy, Delete Blog, FeedBurner, Blog Avatar, Blog Type, Forums, Twitter Tools, Inline Google Maps 2, Subscribe to Comments, AMP, Contact Form (Editors are greeted by “nice try”)
• Upgrades - Upgrades, Credits, History
I also unchecked ‘Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)’… who knows what someone might put in their post when they link to you?
Keep “safe and savvy”.
What it does mean is that students can’t change their passwords. They also can’t delete or change my editorial status from administrator.
I would still like a way for all posts to be sent to me although I do check them regularly. Currently I am the only administrator of their blogs.
I’m really in two minds about this. What do others think?
Add to Diigo
