Everyone thought “What becomes of students blogs?” was a good question but most struggled for answers! Instead let me help by sharing my thoughts.

We’re dealing with two main scenario:

Dealing with Discontinuing Student blogs

While these two scenario require different approach they both have to deal with student blogs that are no longer required (e.g. students that don’t wish to continue blogging, students leaving the school, blogs not used in their class next year).

You will have a strong urge to delete these no longer required student blogs. Unless the parent, student or school absolutely demands these blogs be deleted I definitely wouldn’t delete them.

These blogs are part of their journey, one day they may change their mind, want to check them out or another teacher might like to use them.

Delete is DELETE; it’s impossible for us to undelete them.

Here is what I would do for student blogs no longer required:

  1. Set up an archive page on your class blog with all the student blogs listed under their year group
  2. Change the student role on the blog to subscriber as limits their blog access and means they won’t be able to write or publish posts. Also means they can’t access comments or approve them.
  3. Disable any comments from being posted on the blog using comment moderation. You may also want to disable the comment notification email.

Supporting Students that continue to blog

For students that want to keep their blog you will need to consider who is responsible for them in the long term. Some teachers will get parents to accept responsibility. Or perhaps you happy to monitor them?

My approach is to monitor all student posts and comments using Google Reader. With separate folders for posts and comments. During holidays number of posts and comments will decrease.

Monitoring means if you need to take quick action, such as editing/deleting a post, you can.

In terms of questions relating to Edublogs supporters and next year’s students:

  1. You can create as many student blogs are you want (there are no restrictions)
  2. But can only disable ads on up to 30 blogs (can change which 30 blogs at any time)

Disabling student blogs for the holidays

For those educators who need to disable student blogs for the duration of the end of year holidays you have a few option:

  • For student blogs on Edublogs – same as for blogs no longer required i.e. change the student’s user role and disable comments then change the setting back in the new school year
  • For Student Blogs on an Edublogs Campus site – your site admin may be willing to archive the blog and reactivate it at the start of the school year

Mementos of Their Student blog

Obviously if you don’t delete their blogs they will remain online and be a keepsake. However if you do want the student blogs in alternative formats you could also create a PDF version using BlogBooker.

FINAL THOUGHTS

What haven’t I considered? Missed? Or questions I haven’t thought to answer?

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider feed-icon32x32 Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog PostsSubscribing For Free!