I have taken part in blogging exchanges with other classes and have done all of this through blogger. Most of this I did when working at a leading international school. Internet was carefully monitored and filtered and I was able to use blogger very successfully.
Since working at my current school I have been protected by a more prohibitive regional security layer. This has meant that children are safe from the big bad world of the internet when they are in school. However it has meant that my default blogging platform has been unavailable. After adding an exception to the filtering, I was then able to access most of the features of blogger, but children were unable to comment from within school and I was unable to post from inside school...the whole platform became much less reliable...and much less interactive. From then on I have been on a quest for a different platform. One which was more accessible and interactive.
Enter kidblog.
Kidblog, has
- let me open blogs for each child in my class
- not required children's emails or information
- enabled me to create a safe blogging environment in which I moderate all posts and comments
- inspired my class to read and write for a purpose
- given me the option to give access to guest visitors...the head teacher and the literacy coordinator, for instance
- allowed me to open the blog up to all visitors, should I choose to do so.
Children in my class have taken to it like ducks to water and are finding features, adding hyperlinks, inserting pictures and above all reading and writing for a purpose.
Long may it last!
