Even First Graders Can Blog!

I was checking out Mrs. Patton’s blog when I saw an intriguing title, “Blogging with students? Yes Please! (Even the little ones!)”.  The part that got me interested was “even the little ones”.  

I could imagine that a high school students would be able to understand how to set up a blog (if they don’t have one already).  Now the little ones would find it to be more complicated.  On Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog she has her first graders blogging! Yes, first graders.  I can feel the first grade teachers fearing for the safety of their precious, naïve little ones.  This is proof that it can work and the big bad world of scary internet creeps might not care about a six year old’s blog.

There are two important rules to Mrs. Cassidy's class blogmeister blog. Parents and classmates are allowed to comment, which makes for great interaction.  Some people may not realize that putting a last name could cause the internet creeps to come out of the woodwork.  Rule #1 Mrs. Cassidy has students using first names only.  If there is a post or a comment using a last name it is simply deleted. Rules #2 the students’ faces are only pictured on the main blog page.  Not on the individual entries. 

Now to the good part – when you click on a student’s blog entry it is listed chronologically, which is probably helpful for Mrs. Cassidy.  I randomly chose Camryn.  Each entry has a relevant title and some are just two sentences another is an addition story using Storybird. I love that I saw writing, spelling, math, etc. as blog entries.  Camryn also has pictures that you can tell were created in Paint that have been added to his or her page.  Some students have video recordings of them talking about something in class. This is like an online open house of students’ writing. 

I think this is the greatest thing I’ve seen in a while! Yay technology!