“I am curious to hear from folks on what you tend to use for Blogging in your school, and how you manage the privacy aspects and other issues related to sharing in a open public environment, or if you close this to a private environment how you like this? Also what tools you use, blogger, wordpress, edublogs, moodles blog option.”

I responded with this:

At Yokohama International School we use a multiple of blogging platforms.

As for myself, I use Blogger, Wordpress, Edublogs, as well as Twitter and Posterous. I mostly use Edublogs and Twitter to get discussion points out to educators and to the network I have.

Because my blog feeds into Twitter and my Twitter feeds into my Facebook status or Wall updates, I have a wonderful community of readers and receive immediate feedback from other educators (colleagues and from other schools), family, and friends.

As for students, the Middle School Curriculum Coordinator went to EARCOS Learning 2.0 in September 2008 and when he returned, having asked all questions regarding digital portfolios and blogs, he decided to roll out blogs via his English classes he teaches. He’s extended this effort to the rest of the English Department and now all Middle School students have an Edublogs account. The most important thing he learned was he needed to teach students how to self-publish and learned that he needed to support and encourage teachers/schools/parents/students to not be afraid to be open about their communication.

As for privacy settings – all Grades 5-12 students are given email accounts set up in FirstClass. Once the Curriculum Coordinator signed up to be an Edublogs Supporter, he then used their school email accounts to set up Edublogs accounts for Grades 6-7. As for the Grade 8 students, the Curriculum Coordinator allowed them to use their own email addresses & allowed them to choose their own domain (ie. thispart.edublogs.org)

I support and work with PreK-12 teachers. Lately, I’ve been inviting colleagues and other teachers to this blog as guest writers. This has been a slow start but it started with my strong feeling of wanting to bring my colleagues together to make them feel like they could depend on each other regarding using technology in the classroom. Also it was to show them that I’m learning with them and they are learning together. More and more teachers are getting their own blogs, using Edublogs in particular, that I can invite them as writers to this blog. The website has also been a one-stop place for all the blogs at school.

The Modern Languages Department have been so responsive in using blogs in their classroom. We use Edublogs, Posterous, and Voicethread as blogging platforms. The one thing that is stressed is try not to put their full name with their address or other personal info and/or photo on their blogs. Other than that, the teacher sets the assignment and the students put their assignment and comment on each others’ blogs.

I am all for the public environment since that’s the real world. But it’s really important to scaffold/support the students so you don’t set them up to fail in the ‘real world’ you’re creating with using blogs in the classroom. It’s important for teachers to set goals in their assignments using blogs and/or any technology in the classroom so that students know why exactly their putting their work online for all to see.

I feel strongly that a student must learn how to self-publish and communicate to a wide audience to be effective people. We have no idea what studies or work these students will choose, the best we could do as educators is teach how they could help themselves if they need help in their studies and life.

Christine @ Yokohama International School
PreK-12 e-Learning and Instructional Support
http://cu08.info/resume