Recently, blogging has been a hot topic on the lips of many teachers here in Craven County. Everybody wants to know how to do it! When first introduced, many teachers hit the ground running. They literally found about it one day, “googled” it to find out what it was, and then picked the first free blogging tool available and signed up. Sounds like a good process… that seemed to work for a lot of teachers.  It wasn’t until after some discussion and investigation, that we (Chris, Wayne & I) discovered that teachers might be missing the boat on a few very important security issues. 

1 – Students should never be allowed to access the internet and post information without the content of the post being monitored.

2 – To get started, teachers should create a classroom blog first and then move into individual student blogs. The student blogs should only be done once the teacher has a good grasp on the “HOW TO’s” of blogging.

3 – It is important to have individual student login accounts so that everyone is accountable and no one tried to hide behind someone else.

All of this is very tricky. Primarily, because the free blogs available reguire each user to have an email account. Well, as you know Craven County School students do not have access to email accounts while at school. It is for that reason that I have searched out, experimented and found an excellent process for getting a secure blog for classroom use.

Check out the blogs linked below…. to read the process!

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2008/02/05/students-as-contributors-on-edublogs-the-quick-and-easy-way/

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2007/10/18/sign-me-up-the-elementary-email-solution-linked-gmail-accounts/

http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/668

Let me know what you think! All of you were created and added to my blog through the process linked above. You can post a comment, but it will need to be approved my me first.