Al Upton, an educator based in South Australia, is extremely fortunate to work with the talented miniLegends, a class of Year 3 students, aged 8 and 9. Last year I was incredibly fortunate to be able to work closely with the miniLegends during the 31 Days to Build A Better Blog — which involved completing daily tasks to improve our blogs — with an added incentive of Chocolate for the Most Improved blogger and Best Commenter.

What amazed me about the miniLegends was they were the same age as my youngest son — so I know how hard it can be getting this age to write. And yet during the 31 Day Project the miniLegends:

• Wrote posts on their own blogs
• Visited and read posts on all of the other 13 participating blogs
• Wrote comments on all of the other 13 participating blogs — some of their comments were written better than some of the adult comments

Al and the miniLegends are inspirational; and won the Chocolate prizes for most improved bloggers and best commenters because of their hard work. I really wish my sons’ teachers realised how much their students gain from blogging and did this with my children.

Mentor a miniLegend

This year Al is working again with another group of incredible miniLegends and has invited the educational blogging community to mentor a mini. The idea is for the mentor to drop by their blogs from time to time throughout the year and leave a positive comment. He would really like mentors for all students from as many different countries as possible.

I’ve already chosen a miniLegend which I’ve added to my Google Reader. I’m always happy to help out Al and his students plus the added benefit is I get to watch, closely, how Al uses blogs with his students through the year and see the students’ gains.

To mentor a miniLegend for yourself — check them out on this page — click on a student’s photo to check out their personal blog. Make sure you leave a comment at the bottom of the miniLegends mentoring program page to let Al know that you want to mentor a student.

How The miniLegends Set Up Their Own Blogs

What I didn’t mention in my Tips On Blogging With Students post is that Al wrote his Class blogs – management, moderation and protection post in response to my email asking him to share his student blogging tips — and I’m so pleased for him that his post has been linked to by well known educational bloggers (which makes up for the fact I felt REALLY bad that he stayed up till 4 am writing it).

Al has followed up his Class blogs – management, moderation and protection post with a really detailed post that walks the miniLegends through the process of setting up and personalising their own blogs. This post shows the students in simple steps how to Update their profile, write a post, upload images to their posts, upload a blog avatar, upload a user avatar, change their blog’s look and feel, tells them which widgets to add, set up their blogroll and activate the required plugins.

FINAL THOUGHT

Hope you join with me to mentor a miniLegend.

We love hearing and sharing what you are doing with your students — please tell us about your work and share your tips.

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