My students and I are making our first foray into the world of BLOGGING. I have mixed emotions. I am excited to have this opportunity to share using this powerful 21st Century tool and to give my students the same opportunity. However, putting myself and my students out there is more than a little nerve wracking!
As my students introduce themselves to the world through the “Student Blogging Challenge” – thanks Miss W – I feel compelled to do the same. So….
I am a wife, mother, teacher & lifelong learner. I am committed to doing my best and hopefully bringing the best out in those around me (even if they object). Students often do not get to see the other facets of their teachers’ lives. I hope as we work through the “Student Blogging Challenge” together that they might come to understand that we are more than what they observe in a 55 minute class period. Likewise, I hope to come to appreciate more about my students through their blogging.
Happy Blogging Everyone!
G’day Mrs Powers,
It is great to see a teacher prepared to make mistakes along with the students. Blogging has a steep learning curve at the beginning, so take it slowly. In the challenge, you don’t have to do every activity.
PS If you want to get ahead of your students then doing the Teacher Challenge would be helpful as well http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/blogging-with-students/
PSS If your students are connected to your dashboard> my class then you should have a widget for the sidebar called My Class Blogs. This makes it handy for other students and teachers to find all the students in your class.
Can you direct to instructions for the wiget for ‘
My class blogs? I’d like to have a link/tab we could click to get access/list of all the students blogs.
Thanks for your encouragement and the great resources!
Hi Mrs Powers,
Go to your blog dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across Class Blogs – change some of the settings so it shows all the blogs for your class and maybe make it alphabetical then save. See if that works.
Looks like you have your class blog widget on the sidebar. Every time a student joins your class and you approve them, you will need to save the my class settings again.
Their name wont appear on the widget until you have saved the settings again.
So might be easier to say to your students that they have until Friday to join the class, then on Saturday , you approve them and update the settings. That way you can do more than one at a time.
You will need to change some settings on the class blog widget. Go to appearance> widgets> class blog> open it by clicking on drop down arrow and change to alphabetical, but also make sure you have the number to include changed from 10 which is the default to the number of students who have blogs you are moderating.
Hi, Mrs. Powers.
My name is Mrs. Wohlafka, and I will be the mentor for at least two students in your class for the “Student Blogging Challenge” – Kendall and Ryan. But when I click on their blog links, it goes directly to your posts. Could you help them enable it so I can see their blogs?
So glad to hear that Mrs. Wohlafka. I only see my students every other week. So, it will be sometime next week before I see Kendall and Ryan. But, we will take care of it. Thanks!
Thank you!
Hi, Mrs. Powers!
Have you had a chance to enable it so I can see Kendall and Ryan’s blogs?
Hi, Mrs. Powers!
Thank you. I was able to access Kendall’s blog now, but it doesn’t look like Ryan has posted anything.
G’day Mrs Powers,
Thanks for allowing your students to take part in the challenge. They have started leaving comments for me on the blogging challenge blog but they are not waiting until you have approved their posts. Their URL is including the words wp-admin or preview. They will need to wait until you have published their posts before they leave me a comment.
G’day Mrs Powers,
Me again. Looks like you are starting to get students added to your class blog widget. They are leaving comments for me on the challenge blog but I can’t flip them to our magazine. THis means you need to change a setting.
On your blog you need to do two things:
dashboard> settings> allow search engines Now I can flip YOUR posts.
But to flip the student posts got to:
dashboard> My Class> settings> allow search engines> save settings