I have been blogging with students for 4 or 5 years. I am convinced that it is one of the best instructional tools that we have. Sadly, it is also probably one of the most under-used. Several years ago I created a little video, “Top 10 Reasons to Blog with Students,” in an effort to promote student blogging. Now that YouTube is unblocked for teachers in my district, I recently added it there.
What are the most important features of a blog engine? A secure environment with options for monitoring student posts and comments is a must. The ability for students to upload a variety of file types is definitely a plus. Edublogs is a great blog engine, and I have used it for my personal professional blog for years. In today’s financial climate, cost is an inevitable issue, which unfortunately eliminates Edublogs Campus for me.
In the beginning I used Blogmeister with my students, which is David Warlick’s wonderful protected learning community for student blogs. After that first year, we decided we wanted our students to have a few more options for customizing. I’ve used 21 Classes in recent years, which is fairly user-friendly. We did encounter some computers locking up when attempting to save, but we haven’t determined if that’s an issue with our network or on their end. ClassPress is a relatively new blog engine that is currently being tested by another TIS friend, and I’m waiting to hear a report on that one. In the meantime, I created a comparison chart of features:
I’m still exploring and open to suggestions!
