Blogging with Students - Where do you start?

I have an elementary teacher who is interested in having her students blog. She's new to blogging herself, but is enthusiastic about getting her kids (5th graders) started and will be using Edublogs are her platform. Although I am extremely excited that she wants to do this, and I plan on doing whatever I can to assist her, I do not have any first-hand experience with student blogging. I can (and have) provided her with a few links related to student blogging, but I have a few questions about how she should progress.


1) For elementary students, what is a good "permission" form to send home? Does anyone have a sample?

2) How should she begin? Should she start with one blog where her students can be "authors" or should she set up a blog for each student?

3) If she sets up a blog for each student, does she have moderation control over approving new posts first?

These were just a few questions that popped into my head, but I'm sure there will be others. I want this to be as smooth of an experience for her as possible, so I'm asking for helpful advice from those of you who have been there. How should she begin? What hiccups might she expect? What problems have you run into and how were they handled? Thank you in advance for your help and I will compile the advice given in a new blog post.

Photo credit: DavidGilmour on Flickr
Photo credit : BJMCCRAY on Flicker

A few "finds" to share...

I realized that I stumble across some great links, whether from Plurk, Twitter, or my Google Reader, but I'm not very consistent about sharing them. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try and be a bit better about that and here are a few that I've become aware of in the past two weeks.

My Brochure Maker
@kjarrett on Twitter mentioned this Flash-based brochure and flyer maker for making brochures as Publisher isn't exactly "friendly" for younger students. I have to agree with his assessment, too. I checked out this Web 2.0 application and it's very simple to use. There isn't a lot of room for customization, which I liked. Why? Because it will force them to focus more on the content and less on design.

Real World Math with Google Earth
I'll be honest with you...I hate math. However, had Google Earth been around when I was learning math, I can honestly say that I would have enjoyed it far more. This great site offers a variety of lessons broken down into four categories: Concepts, Project based learning, Measurement, and Exploratory. Within each category you'll find at least one lesson along with a Google Eart kmz file to use. What I also liked was the fact that both NCTM and NETS*S standards are listed along with other lesson information.


Educational Blogs You Should Be Investigating
This blog post is courtesy of mrssmoke of Plurk. There are other lists out there of educational bloggers, but sometimes going through them takes forever. She offers a nice, concise list of educational bloggers and has categorized them by field of discipline and grade level, which I find particularly useful.

Life Magazine Photo Archive - Hosted by Google

Search millions of photos from the Life magazine photo archive from the 1750's to today. Many of the images have not been previously published.
You can apply a filter to a Google image search by adding "source:life" to any search.

For example: computer source:life

50 Tools and Tricks to Revolutionize Your Notetaking
This blog entry by Holly McCarthy features 50 tools that "that let you share ideas, store your thoughts directly on a web page and more". Holly has sorted the tools into eight categories, which is helpful if you're looking for one particular function.

Picasa 3 Collage Feature

I love it when I drop in to quickly check out my Plurk PLN and end up getting distracted by a few great finds! Jamielpeters shared a Youtube video introducing Picasa 3. I have used Picasa in the past, but never really got into it since I already have Photoshop, and for quick fixes I use Irfanview. After watching just a small portion of the video, I decided to update my Picasa. Why? For the photo collage feature!

In my district, I am hosting a web-based 23 Things class and I try to find Creative Commons licensed pictures to use for each "Thing". Creative Commons and Flickr are two topic that we'll cover, but I also want the participants to explore some of the creative things they can also do with what they find. The image that I created above is via Picasa and a group of photos that I found on Flickr, most of which I used in a recent GaETC presentation that I did on building a Professional Learning Community (PLN). I LOVE the way it turned out!

Some of the past photo "collage" features in Picasa didn't allow for a lot of customization. I'm very happy to report that has changed in this version! I was able to customize the background color, tilt and resize photos, go back and grab additional photos from other folders and provide frames for the photos (white or polaroidesque). Just another great, FREE tool from Google!!