This week at the 2015 Miami Device Conference I met Andrea Hernandez (@edtechworkshop), an educator at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Florida. Andrea is at forefront of using WordPress blogs as “Blogfolios” for all students at her school. Their Blogfolios project is in its 6th year! Her post “Blogfolios Framework” includes a wonderfully helpful infographic communicating the expectations for blogging at her school. Her post “Blogfolios Overview” includes 2 more infographics about the “why” of Blogfolios and the components of a schoolwide blogging implementation. Sylvia Tolisano (@langwitches) has worked extensively with Andrea and the teachers at her school on this classroom and student blogging initiative. I LOVE the work they have and are continuing to do together! Philosophically their work is right in line with the advocacy I shared yesterday at Miami Device in my session, “Newton’s Laws of Classroom Blogging” as well as the OklaEd Learning Showcase blog.
During out lunch break today, I recorded a 12 minute video interview with Andrea, in which she explained how student and class blogs work at her school, how they leave the decision up to parents and students on whether to make blogs public or private, and how things work when students graduate and leave their school. (Blogs are archived.) This kind of self-hosted WordPress setup for school-wide blogging is something I’m very interested in bringing to my school in Oklahoma City.
Andrea has also shared the media release form they use at their school, which can be a helpful model for others. (PDF) I added this link to: