Choosing a theme is hard. You will often like most of the features but one aspect will annoy you.

can you recommend one?

Thanks for your compliment about my classroom blog. It has been the best project I have ever done with children. (And I have taught for over twenty years, like you.)

The tech summer camp you attended sounds fabulous. They covered quite a bit! You can see how many wonderful opportunities there are for integrating technology. The trick is to choose technology that adds meaning to a lesson, and not just technological flash. ☺

You asked if I had any recommendations. My advice to you is to start small. Pick something that interests you and set reasonable goals to progress. Having a classroom blog really interested me. I created a simple blog and set a goal to try to publish with my class once a week. The first few posts we wrote together, and then as students were ready, they started writing with a partner or by themselves. As I felt more confident, I started branching out and creating small videos or experimenting with Voice Thread. Slowly, I add gadgets to my sidebar…

I also recommend teaching directed lessons about how to blog. Even though many students seem to know a lot about technology, they need to be taught how to effectively post, comment, and participate in the blogging community.

It is a real process, and if you try to do everything at once, it will likely be too overwhelming. We don’t expect our students to master everything right away, so we should set the same standard for ourselves. ☺

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I teach third grade, and I teach them to type. They can take responsibility for writing posts almost immediately. Your first graders are not at that point. However, there are many first grade teachers who are blogging. I would take a look at what they are able to do with their students and follow their leads. (As Sue mentioned, Edublogger has a great Class Blog List at the top of The Edublogger.)

I hope my advice helps. If you are interested, here is a link to a post I put together for teachers at my school who were wanting to blog with their students. It is called Blogging Tips for Teachers.

Good luck with your class this year! Keep following Sue here at The Edublogger! She is a fantastic resource for educators!

Linda Yollis

Click on this one to go to the blog & steal some ideas! See I’m still learning!

Ooops! Click on my name in this post & it’ll take you to my blog! I gave the addy as .com instead of . org on the other one! Sorry!

My blog is open for everyone to view. That really is the only way to have a global audience. We teach internet safety with a CyberSmart curriculum & talk a lot about what information is safe to share & what is not. I know what you mean about being overwhelmed initially! I think sometimes Web 2.0 will make my head explode! All of these new venues for integrating technology have ignited my teaching & my students, so it’s very worth it! I really am just learning as I go. With Kindergarten you may be doing more dictation of blog entries until the end of the year. You can scan work and post photos as well. Read my reply to bstahl above for some more info on how I started Click on my name and it’ll take you to my blog. I just started with some ideas from another blogger & began to make it my own. If you visit feel free to comment!

I started later in the year & I really just jumped in up to my neck! I started with content that I created and then moved onto having pairs of students blog together. I gave them a topic to get them started, gave suggestions & helped to edit their posts. Inviting my school staff to view & comment helped my students with feedback. When my friend who is teaching in Viet Nam commented that opened their eyes to a global community! I highly recommend having a ClustrMap or Flag Counter on the blog because you may have many visitors who don’t leave a comment but you can still see them on the map! Some map & flag counters have stats & pie graphs that can be interesting to view, too. This year I’m planning on having the content at the beginning of the year be more collaborative & we’ll be doing a lot of viewing & commenting of other student/classroom blogs. That is ultimately the best way to drive traffic to your blog & create a blogging community for your classroom. If you visit our blog be sure to comment & leave your URL so we can come see what you’re up to!

I attended a tech summer camp that my district held. We briefly touched on google docs, wikis, blogs, video threads, podcasts… social networks. By the end of the four days, my head was spinning. I am excited about all the possibilities. I am reading everything that I can find. It is a bit overwhelming I would like to try to do a class blog so I checked out yours. Wow! I am inspired. I teach a regular education first grade class with BSI (Basic Skills Insruction), ESL (English as a Second Language) and Advanced Studies students. My students are not reading or writing at the beginning of the year. Do you have any recommendations on how I should start? I’ve been teaching 26 years, but this is all new to me. I want to help set a model to encourage my grade level colleagues to embrace technology and use it in their classrooms. Elementary teachers in my district have one computer in their classrooms, but this summer the district is installing Smartboards in all our elementary classrooms. YEAH! I know that I need to take it one step at a time or I will be so overwhelmed that I won’t accomplish anything. It is hard when there are so many things I would like to try.