Great Tools to Create Protected Blogs and Web pages for your Class

As I was reading " The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age " by William Kist, I stopped by the chapter talking about how teachers can set up blogs for their classrooms ( pages 52 to 64 ). Dr Kist has mentioned several facts about the educational blogging that I want to share with you. I have also compiled a list of some of the best blogging platforms teachers and students can use to set up secure blogs for their classrooms.

According to Dr Kist, teachers will often introduce blogging to their students by teaching the routines and conventions of blogging, feeling that the key to a successful experience, whether offline or online, is setting up the agreed upon group norms at the beginning of the process. These general guidelines can be something like  :

• It is okay to be critical but it is not okay to be mean
• If you have something negative to say combine it with something positive
• Make sure your comment stays on the topic
• If you do not have anything to write, don't write anything
• Always remember they can comment on your post too.

Staying safe online is part of introducing  blogging into the classroom for many teachers. It is highly recommened that before you get your students engaged in setting up their blogs, they first need to have some notions of online safety and how they can protect their digital identies while working online. There are several resources you can check to learn more about this topic most important of which are:

• Free Tools and Resources about Internet Safety for students
• Online Safety Tools to Protect Kids and Inform Parents about Internet Dangers

Instead of providing all the tools here which will make the post ver long I compiled them into an easy downloadable presentation.
I have divided this presentation into two parts :

1- Blogging Platforms teachers and students can use to create and host their classroom blogs
2-Free tools to create websites and simple web pages for your class


Click on this link if you want to share it with your colleagues.

Here is the presentation in Docstoc

Great Tools to Create Protected Blogs and Web pages for your Class