Pros and Cons of Educational Blogging Options (A skypecast invitation!)

By Wesley Fryer On July 9, 2006 · · 17 Comments

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

I’ve setup another skypecast for this Tuesday, July 11th at 8 pm US central time called, “Pros and Cons of Educational Blogging Options.” (Use the previous link to actually join the Skypecast when it starts– you might bookmark/favorite that page so you can easily return to it later.) The idea for this Skypecast was inspired by Mark Ahlness’s post “The Case for Classblogmeister” that I responded to and reflected on earlier this evening.

Please join in this conversation if this works with your schedule and is of interest! Some of the blogging tools I’d suggest we can and should discuss include:

Bloglines (for more on this, see Stephen Rahn’s NECC preso)
Blogger
Classblogmeister
WordPress
Edublogs (for teacher blogs)
Learnerblogs (for student blogs)
Thingamablog (We’ll need Miguel to join us to advocate for Thingamablog!)
b2evolution
Think.com (Cheryl Oakes may drop by to advocate for Think.com)
Drupal (a content management system that supports blogging)

Other issues to address:

Public availability of student’s blog posts versus intranet only.
Commenting: Thoughts on moderation, allowing comments from the outside, leaving comments open, etc.

Are there other blogging tools you think we should include in this discussion? If so, please comment here and include a link to the tool if you know it. Then I’ll add it to this list, we can use this as an agenda for the skypecast. You might also check out Vicki Davis’ post “Chris Harbeck’s class blogging practices: 8th grade math” as more food for thought in advance of the dialog. Miguel has started an online database of blogging tools that is great using lazybase (http://lazybase.com/blogtools), I’ve added a few entries to it this evening. (Lazybase is an amazing web 2.0 tool btw to create stuff like this that I hadn’t seen before. Wow! Thanks Miguel!

If you want to join this Skypecast, I’ve posted a few guidelines for participating in skypecasts that you might want to review (and please add to if I’ve left something out) before joining the conversation next Tuesday night North American time. Skype on!

Remember to follow Wesley Fryer on Twitter (@wfryer), Facebook and Google+. Also "like" Wesley's Facebook pages for "Speed of Creativity Learning" and his eBook, "Playing with Media." Don't miss Wesley's latest technology integration project, "Mapping Media to the Common Core / Curriculum."

On this day..

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http://teach2geek.blogspot.com Brandi Caldwell

Darn! I am going to a concert that night. I will definitely catch it on podcast. Thanks for the mention in the posts. It was so much fun to be a part of that. I am so disappointed to miss this one since blogging is my passion. I hope you have a good crowd. When I get home from the concert, I will see if you guys are still chatting.
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

Brandi: I’ve set this up for two hours, so hopefully you can join us. If there is a break in the concert, you can IM me and I can skypeout to your cell phone to have you join for a bit if you want.
http://stephenrahn.com/blog Stephen Rahn

I’d like to join, and I was wondering if you think that bloglines would be an appropriate addition to this skypecast. If not, perhaps another one which addresses RSS and aggregators might be a good idea. I just did a presentation at NECC on this. http://tinyurl.com/jcxwq
http://blog.brettmoller.com Brett Moller

Count me in that is during my lunch break at work so fits nicely for me!!
http://ahlness.com Mark Ahlness

Wesley, I plan on being there, this sounds great! How about adding edublogs.org to the list? Lots of teachers are getting their feet wet there… and it’s not blocked in my district, yet. – Mark
Pingback: Learning Is Messy - Blog » Blog Archive » Help set the agenda for our next Skypecasts and join in!
Mike Honsberger

I used Classblogmeister with great success for my 80+ sixth grade students last year. David really created a winner and it only improved through the year. This year, I am hoping to utilize emai, blogs and IM which led me to Gaggle.net. Gaggle also has some great preview tools which leads me to say they should be included in the conversation. I’m looking forward to hearing about the other tools educators are using. http://gaggle.net/gen?_template=/templates/gaggle/html/index.jsp
http://www.cheryloakes.com Cheryl Oakes

I’d like to join and give a 2 minute about think.com as a good start for bloggers.
Cheryl
http://bumpontheblog.etowns.net Brian Grenier

I am going to try to join in, it sounds like a great topic to be discussing. Depending on how my two year old son is, my plans may have to change. Will you be podcasting the conversation afterwards? I am particularly intrested in discuss David Warlick’s ClassBlogmeister. It seems to be the most feasible solution for teachers in my school district.

Brian
http://bumpontheblog.etowns.net
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

Yes, I’ll record our conversation and post it as a podcast afterwards! Hope you can join us! You can always mute your skype program if your son tries to chime in at an inopportune time!
http://hetherington.learnerblogs.net Mike Hetherington

I successfully used learnerblogs last year with my 6th graders in Room 613. I’ll try to join in Tuesday evening and share my thoughts on student blogging. Great topic!!
http://hetherington.learnerblogs.org Mike Hetherington

I successfully used learnerblogs last year with my 6th graders in Room 613. I’ll try to join in Tuesday evening and share my thoughts on student blogging. Great topic!!
(please post this one – bad link in the previous post)
http://borderland.northernattitude.org Doug Noon

My connection is way too slow for any Skyping, (podcasting and video-watching, too…but that’s another matter) so I can’t participate though I’d like to. I’ve done a lot of research into this problem with elementary students in mind.

At this point, I’m using Drupal on a free domain for teachers that I registered at Lunarpages. This may not be within the parameters that everyone is considering for discussion because it requires some technical knowledge about MySQL and webhosting-related stuff, but I believe Drupal offers an excellent feature set for classrooms or even whole schools. My students work from last year is at Tell the Raven. I plan to do some new things with it in the fall and document that development process on the site.

I think that people should consider a variety of options, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of each. A hosted domain has it’s definite pluses and minuses. Perhaps a table could be generated somewhere (like the lazybase/blogtools page) that lists the relevant features of each alternative so that teachers can compare the options at a glance. Generating a list of relevant features in itself would be a fruitful topic for discussion.

Sorry I can’t participate directly. This is the best I can do. I’ll be looking for a post on the outcomes of the discussion. If there’s an audio archive I might be able to download it using the all night method. Thanks for your efforts with this. The “how” is one of the hardest problems for a person who has already come to terms with the “why” question.
http://www.technospud.com Jennifer W

This is going to be so great.

I just finally feel rested up from NECC and coherent thoughts have begun again.

I have used both Blogmeister (for an online project with 300 teachers) and also Blogger. Bloglines is now the ONLY way I check blogs and I want to learn more about WordPress.

I just recently heard of a new blog — http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/home.php — which seems interesting as well.

Can’t wait to be a part of this skypecast.

Jennifer Wagner
http://2cents.davidwarlick.com David Warlick

I’ll plan to be there, but for only a brief time. On the road again with a reception tonight and I have a keynote tomorrow. I’m curious as to what people see in the future blogging tool. What’s blogging going to look like five years from now (2 years from now) that makes it an even better tool for education.

– dave –
Scott S. Floyd

Wesley, Thanks so much for this opportunity. While my high speed failed several times on me, I still got some great content out of the Skypecast. I look forward to the podcast. We have been discussing this topic in our National Writing Project training for the last five weeks. I expect you will have quite a few downloads from that group.

I did want to add a bit about editing student posts before approving them. I teach 7th grade English. My students know that if their posts do not end up on the blog within a short amount of time then they had issues within them. They go back, edit, revise, and resubmit for publication. It is the writing process at work, and they have the ownership of identifying the problems and correcting them. It is part of their job as a student in my English class, yet they do not see it as a job. They see it as part of the process of publishing writing, and they absolutely love it. Like several others mentioned, my blogs with them is a semi-professional to professional atmosphere, so they know there are higher standards than their Xangas they IM talk on. I don’t mind the lol’s because that adds voice, but we don’t go all out text message abbreviations. The message gets lost in that.

As always, you are serving a grand cause. Thank you again for your passion and commitment. It inspires the rest of us to greatness.
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

You are kind Scott, it was my pleasure, and what fun!