I have been pondering just how to expand our student blogging next year for a while. There’s the pedagogical side of it, which is a conversation I need to have with teachers, but then there is the platform side of it, a conversation I am starting to address with our IS staff.
As a 1:1 school, it’s important that we leverage our technology to the maximum. I am continually encouraging teachers towards student content production for an authentic, global audience. Part of that is blogs. They can be used for many pedagogical applications / learning conversations across the curriculum.
I have approached IS about hosting WordPress blogs on our own server in lieu of our current use of a mix of Edublogs, Blogger and Classblogmeister. I would like to host this on our own server space, but support is always an issue. The Department of Education does have a teacher portal and a student portal is scheduled to be piloted next year, but I am not convinced that the MS Sharepoint platform will do much for us. It is a business tool, and while it has blogs and wikis built in, I remain to be convinced that they encourage the innovation and creativity we want to encourage in our classrooms.
I was asked by IS what would I want in a student blog platform…I had to think a bit, but I think this list captures the basic features in a school-wide student blogging platform.
1. Public access and comment features (flexibility in settings from open to moderated comments)
2. Ability to embed visual traffic monitoring (e.g. ClustrMaps)…dots on a map are a tremendous motivator for students
3. Ability to embed badges and other widgits on blog sidebars to manage look, feel and usability
4. RSS feeds available for both posts and comments
5. Ability to upload images and small video files into blog
6. Ability to easily embed media (e.g. YouTube, TeacherTube, Slideshare, Flickr, etc.) via html embed codes into blog posts and sidebar widgits
7. Student ability to choose from a variety of look and feel themes…just like they all dress differently, they all want different expressions on their public face…
Anything to add?
tags: technology, education, whipple, wordpress