The Class Blog List has been updated! Is your class blog on the list?

Once yearly we go through the entire Edublogger’s class blog list to ensure the list remains current, contains helpful resources and see what else we can do to help you to find class blogs for the grades and subjects you teach.

We’ve just completed the 2012 update!  We hope you find the list helps.

You can view the list by:

  1. Going to our Check out our class blog list page.
  2. Downloading our Edublogger’s class blog list PDF — handy if you want to print copies to share with others!
  3. Scrolling to the bottom of this post to view our embedded Google Spreadsheet of the Edublogger’s class blog list.

Please let us know if you would like your class blog added to the list.  We add new blogs onto the list throughout the year and would love to add yours.

About The Edublogger’s Class Blog list

The Edublogger’s class blog list was originally created in 2008 for educators to use as a resource to:

  • Get ideas on how class blogs are used with students.
  • Check out ideas they can use with their students and on their own class blog.
  • Make connections with classes in other countries.

Now 3 years since the list was first created:

  • It’s still growing — the list is updated monthly to add new class blogs to the list.
  • It’s the most visited page on this blog

The list is created by teachers who submit their class blogs to be added to it by leaving a comment on these posts.

Keeping the list current

To ensure that the class blog list remains current and contain helpful resources we go through the entire list once a year to remove any blogs that:

  1. Have been deleted
  2. No longer exist
  3. Are no longer active (haven’t updated recently)
  4. Have changed their privacy from public to private.

Improving the list

During the yearly update we also look at how we can improve the list.   This year we have made the following changes:

  • We’ve changed to an embedded Google spreadsheet because it makes it easier to quickly update the list.
  • We’re broken the class blog list into Grades; Subject Areas such as Maths, Science, English, History, LOTE, EFL /ESL; type of blog such as Library, School news.

Blogging Since

We’re also aware that with some many blogs on the list that educators needed a way to quickly scan the list while learning more about the age of specific blogs.

The solution was the Blogging Since information.  For example, 2004 means the blog has been used for class blogging since 2004 whereas 2009 means a blog with has been used as a class blog since 2009. A class blog with ‘Since’ and the date indicates the teacher has been blogging for awhile but is now using a different class blog URL.

I continue to be amazed with how long some of these blogs have been used for class blogging!

Is your Class Blog on the List?

If you want to add your class blog to this list (or update your class blog details) leave a comment on this post to share with us:

  1. Your Class Blog title(s) and URL(s).
  2. Grade level(s) of your student
  3. If applicable. what subject areas or class blog category?  Refer to the category list on Our check out Class blogs page.
  4. Country
  5. Age of class blog.  Blogging since?
  6. Feel free to add other information as educators refer to comments to create connections with other class blogs!

Please check the Check out Class Blogs list first before providing updated information.

And here’s the complete Edublogger’s Class Blog list:

Just click on their blog title to visit the class blog!

2012 to be the year of student blogging!

When Edublogs first launched back in 2005, the average classroom had one computer, and many didn’t have even one.

Certainly there were next to no 1-to-1 initiatives or tablets in schools – and mobile computer workstations were just starting to be used.

Getting to the point, the face of blogging in education is way different now then it was just a few years ago.

On Edublogs, the two most popular types of blogs have traditionally always been:

  1. Classroom – Teachers providing updates and resources for students and parents
  2. Professional – A place for educators to share ideas and collaborate with each other

But over the past couple of years, there has been a new kid in town. It’s gone from a few brave teachers here and there that have pioneered the way for others to becoming standard practice in many schools and programs.

It’s student blogging, and it is here to stay!

And we couldn’t be more excited about it. There has always been students using Edublogs in various ways, but now with more devices available and an increased focus in writing and technology use and various curricula, more and more students are finding themselves blogging in school – young and old and across all subjects.

As discussed in this Time Magazine article, research shows that there are more benefits to blogging then you might first think – including improving student self-esteem and confidence offline and outside the classroom.

What does all of this mean?

Well for starters, it means that we at Edublogs have to do an even better job of making it easy for educators to create and manage large numbers of student blogs. We have tons of great tools already in place, especially on our Edublogs Campus sites, but we definitely recognize there is room to improve.

Yesterday we announced a few new tools to help with teachers that need to moderate and approve all comments and posts on student blogs – and there’s a bunch more in the plans for 2012. We believe that the learning benefits of blogging with students is maximized when students have their own personal blogs that they can take ownership of. Our system is designed (and will continue to improve) to let that be a reality in a safe, engaging, and easy to manage way.

This also means that the online community of educators that are blogging with students is growing. Through twitter, blogs, and other means, we need to develop ways to better facilitate collaboration and connect teachers and students that share similar goals. We’ve seen some of this through blogging projects such as this and the twice-yearly Student Blogging Challenge, but putting systems in place that bring it to the masses would be truly powerful.

What do you think? Are you using blogs with your students?

What Edublogs features or community resources would you like to see?

Photo: Teacher With Students from BigStock

Our Class blog list has been improved – Is Your Class Blog on the List?

The idea was simple!

Create a class blog list for educators to use as a resource to get ideas for their own class blog and make connections with classes in other countries.

Now over 2 years later since the class blog list was first created in 2008:

  1. It’s still growing
  2. It’s the most visited page on this blog

But like all good ideas it does take work 8-)

So it’s now been updated to ensure that it does remain current and contain resources that are helpful.

This update I’ve looked at how else can I make it a better resource?

New Categories

Improved Categories

Firstly, I wanted to make it easier for you to find the class blogs for the grades and/or subjects you teach.

So I’ve improved the categories to better separate:

  1. Primary / Elementary into each Grade level
  2. Secondary / High into subject areas.

Updated All Blogs

Checked all blogs current

Next, I’ve checked every blog on the list and removed any that have been:

  1. Deleted
  2. No longer exist
  3. Are no longer active (haven’t updated within 6 months)
  4. Have changed their privacy from public to private.

And off course, made sure all new blogs submitted were added to the list.

Class Blogging Since ?

Blogging since icon

Finally. with over 200 class blogs on the list, I wanted to make a way for you to be able to quickly scan the list while learning more about the age of specific blogs.

So I’ve added an icon next to the older class blogs to show how long that blog has been used as a class blog for.

For example, Class blogging since 2004 means the blog has been used for class blogging since 2004 whereas a blog with Class blogging since 2009 has been used as a class blog since 2009.

I’m sure others, like myself, will be amazed at how long some of these blogs have been used for class blogging!

Is your Class blog on the List?

You can check out the more information about each class blog in these post:

I’ve now had to close off comments on both those posts so I can make the class blog submissions manageable again.

If you want to add your class blog to this list (or update your class blog details) leave a comment on this post to share with us:

  1. Your Class Blog name(s) and URL(s).
  2. Approximate age of students
  3. What category does the blog belong to?  Primary, Secondary, Vocational Education and Training, College, University, Home School?  If applicable. what subject areas?  Refer to the category list on Our check out Class blogs page.
  4. Country
  5. Age of class blog.  Blogging since?
  6. Feel free to add other information as educators do refer to comments left to connect with other class blogs!

Please check the Check out Class Blogs list first before providing updated information.

Here’s an example of the type of information needed:

Example of the information required

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

Inspiring Example of embedding lessons as videos on a Class Blog

SBEC Chemistry and Physics blog Meet Tammy – a high school science teacher with an outstanding class blog which you can visit here.

Tammy serves as an inspiration to all of us that are interested in creating an online environment that is a natural extension of our classrooms.

She is amazing when it comes to recording her daily classroom notes and embedding them in her class blog as a video.

We thought that you might like to get to know her a bit better and how she does what she does, so we asked her a few questions and she was kind enough to reply.

What were the main reason(s) why you started recording videos for your students?

For years I taught my chemistry and physics students by using dry erase markers on an overhead projector.

When interactive boards came along, I was excited, but I needed to be able to see my students while they worked with me.  When I went behind my demonstration station to work problems on the board, it was like my students thought I’d left the building!

Another challenge was the missing student – students gone on mission trips, students out with the flu, students in tournaments, or students who missed the concepts in class that day and just needed to hear the lesson again.

Everything came together when, from all different directions and just about all at one time, I discovered Edublogs, eBeam Interact (an interactive projection device and software), and the Wacom Cintique Tablet.

Tools used with the videos

How do you create your videos?

I’m able to write on the tablet while facing my students and record both my voice and pen strokes with eBeam and a cordless mic.

At the end of the day, I upload the videos to blip.tv, and then embed them on our class blog.  In addition to blip.tv, other online resources that have been really helpful for me as I post the lessons to the website are compfight.com and Flickr.com

Screenshot of one of Tammy's videos

How are you using your class blog?

I use our class blog for posting videos of daily lectures, reviews, and help sessions, but also as an online filing cabinet of sorts for just tons of resources for my students – the weekly syllabus, project information, assignments, interactive websites, tutorials, etc.

So many wonderful teachers and organizations have put such incredible resources for learning chemistry and physics online,  and now my students can access them though our blog.

Another very important way I use our class blog is to keep in touch with my students, and for them to keep in touch with each other, outside of class.

I’m working on helping them learn how scientists across the world communicate by having them share lab results, collaborate on projects, etc., through comments.

They also use the comments to ask me (or their classmates) questions they forgot or might have been hesitant to ask in class.

My chemistry students recently finished the huge end of the year research project, and, oh, my word, I thought someone from Edublogs was going to call and tell us we were overloading the system.

How class blog is used

What has been the benefits of your class blog to your students?

Our class blog has proven to be a tremendous resource for my students who for one reason or another have to be absent from class.

From their homes or hotel room, while waiting between races on their lap top, or on iTunes, my students can watch the day’s lecture, watch videos that I might have shown in class through the VodPod, get copies of assignments, learn about upcoming projects, and then ask me or their classmates questions by posting comments.

My students love to see themselves in action, but I could never seem to keep up with getting all the pictures I took printed for everyone to see.  With our class blog, I’m able to use Flickr and post picture and videos on our blog so the students can see all of them, any time, and not just the ones I can afford to print. I also send pics and video to Facebook and Twitter, and I’ve had former students comment on, “I remember when… .”

My kids would never have this kind of interaction with me, with each other, and even with the world without our class blog.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thank you, Tammy, for all of your kind and informational words!

We would love to hear from others of you out there that are using your blogs in exciting ways to improve the learning experience of students.

Feel free to leave a comment if you would like to share and possibly be part of a future post such as this one!

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

Step 3 – Teaching Commenting Skills & Etiquette (Guest Post by Kathleen McGeady)

bloggingstep3We’ve designed a series of nine steps, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

Your third step is to teach commenting skills & etiquette.

It’s my great pleasure to introduce our guest blogger, Kathleen McGeady, who provides important advice on teaching commenting skills (regardless of the age of your students).

About our Guest Blogger

Kathleen McGeadyKathleen McGeady is in the seventh year of her career and in that short time her approach to teaching has changed greatly.

The opportunity to take Teacher Professional Leave in 2008 provided Kathleen with the time to explore the role that ICT and Web2.0 tools can play in the classroom.

Kathleen loves to find new and creative ways to use blogs, the IWB, Web2.0 tools, iPod Touches and global projects and in her classroom to enhance the learning experience of each of her students.

Kathleen is currently teaching Grade Two at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. She writes about technology integration on her blog and in Education Technology Solutions magazine.

Blogging: Teaching Commenting Skills

This was originally posted on Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom and has been cross posted with permission from Kathleen McGeady.

I am currently in the process of introducing my Grade Two students to blogging.

Our 2KM class blog is proving to be very popular with students and families.

As I have previously blogged about, I like to follow these steps when introducing blogging to students.

blogging progression

This is my third year of blogging with young students and I am still learning all the time.

In previous years I believe I progressed much too quickly from having students comment on the class blog to writing posts. My students never really learned how to compose a quality comment and I believe I didn’t set my expectations of the students high enough! I was happy for them just to be commenting.

This year I am taking a different approach. Inspired by the amazing commenting skills of Mrs Yollis’ Third Grade students, I am putting a lot of effort into teaching my students how to write quality comments on posts before we move on to writing posts.

By “quality comments” I mean

  • writing the comment like a letter (greeting, body, closing, signature)
  • using correct spelling, punctuation and spacing,
  • reading over the comment and editing before submitting,
  • complimenting the writer in a specific way, asking a question, and/or adding new information to the post,
  • writing a relevant comment that is related to the post,
  • not revealing personal information in your comment.

I really wanted to limit the “I like your blog!!!” or “2KM is cool” type comments and I am finding this explicit teaching of what a quality comment looks like is really working.

I am teaching students commenting skills through

  • modelling and composing comments together  on the IWB,
  • teaching students about the “letter” format during writing lessons,
  • giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected,
  • having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week.

I collaborated with my teaching partner, Kelly Jordan on this poster “How Can I Write a Great Blog Comment?” to teach students about blogging skills.

We will also send a copy of this poster (as show below) home with each child.

Blog comment poster

Linda Yollis has written a fantastic article about how to teach commenting skills. It is well worth a read!

I have “borrowed” many ideas from Linda such as recording a screencast video that shows how to leave a comment on the blog. I recorded my screencast through Jing. I also used Linda’s idea of sending an email out to all parents to encourage them to leave comments.

As Linda says, “commenting is what keeps the blog alive” and “teaching and encouraging good commenting skills makes your blog more interesting for everyone.” I agree!

How to leave a comment

I use a How To Comment page on my 2KM class blog to explain to parents ad students how to comment.

Here’s an example of the type of information you could include:

Please leave a comment on our posts!!

We ask parents who leave comments to please only use their first name if they do not wish to identify their child.

Leaving a comment is as simple as this…

1. Click on the heading of the post you wish to comment on or the “comment” link at the top or at the bottom of the post.
2. Scroll down until you can see the “Leave a Comment” section
3. You will be asked for your name (you can use a nickname) and email address (this is not published)
4. You will also need to write the “spam word”
5. Click “submit comment”
6. Your comment WILL NOT appear straight away. It is sent to Miss McGeady via email for checking first. If your comment is okay it will soon appear on the site!

Example of adding a comment

Comment moderation settings

The default commend moderation settings on Edublogs blogs is that any visitors that have had a comment approved on the blog in the past will have their comment immediately posted and only comments from new visitors go into moderation.

How to moderate all comments

If you would like all comments to be moderated and not be published on your blog until approved by an administrator you need to change your comment moderation setting in Settings > Disccussion to “An administrator must always approve the comment”.

Comment moderation settings

Settings > Disccussion is the Advance Admin interface.

If you are in the Easy Admin interface you need to click on Activate Advanced Admin button at the top of your blog dashboard.

Settings > Discussion

For more information on comment  moderation settings and approving comments refer to:

  1. Controlling who can comment on posts
  2. Managing, editing and approving comments

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen for writing this guest post and for all your great work!

Please leave a comment here or on Kathleen’s post if you have any more ideas about teaching commenting skills to students!

And here’s where you find the other steps for setting up your class blog:

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