I think public blogs for teachers are a great idea since we are so good at sharing ideas. You often hear "there is no sense reinventing the wheel." At the kindergarten level, or whenever dealing with students, I would lean on the cautious side and keep all bogs private.
I do think student blogs are beneficial. They would allow a wealth of different points of view giving students more opportunity to learn new things.
As we teach writing in Kindergarten I might use blogs as a motivator for publishing good work. We write daily in journals and having the opportunity to put an entry on a blog might be a big reward for my little ones. I think a class collection of entries would be wonderful to share. I would be concerned with management of the blogs. Kindergarten students would need a lot of attention and assistance to create their blog.
Consider using a blog that can be accessed with a password. That way the parents and grandparents can have fun reading the posts, too.
ReplyDeleteJust be SURE to tell your principal FIRST, and then tell the parents. Specify your instructional goal and stress how you're going to protect their identities. Parents don't like to be surprised.
If you already have a class website in use (which we always have to get permission for), then add your blog to that site. It should be set to private, but you might need email addresses to invite users. I'm not sure exactly how that works though.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great reward that would be! And how motivational that would be for the students. Our kindergartners are always itching to use the computers. This would be a great addition to kidwriting; heck you could even teach the writing process!