Edublogs.org
Lesley Raymond
Why use Edublogs?
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Free! (+ other versions with more features)
Easy to use
Easy access to students’ blogs
Insert pictures & videos into your blog
Categorize your posts
Comment & leave feedback on each others’
blogs
• Safe & secure
• Curriculum Corner
• Tons of uses for blogging in the classroom!
User-friendly, straight fordward &
easy to use
Edublogs is powered by WordPress and uses the same interface.
Manage Students’ Blogs
You can add &
manage students’
blogs just by
knowing their
email addresses.
Students will
receive an email
asking them to join
Edublogs; these
students’ blogs
will be displayed
on your
Dashboard making
them easily
accessible to you.
Easy picture & video sharing
Pictures – You can insert your own photos or
copy/paste online images directly to your blog
Videos – If you use the free
version, you can provide
students with a quick
hyperlink to a video. If your
school purchases the Pro
version of Edublogs, the video
can be directly embedded into
your blog post.
Categorize your posts
You can categorize each
post. For example, I
chose the categories
“In-class Assignments”
and “Projects”.
You could post
interesting stories and
other extras that might
interest students. These
categories are a great
way to make the blog
more user-friendly so
students can jump
quickly to an
assignment they’re
looking for.
Safe for students to use
• Since Edublogs’ purpose is for use in the
classroom adult content is blocked
• There are various privacy settings – you can
have your students’ blogs accessible only to
yourself and/or other class members
• While many school networks block blogging
websites, Edublogs is accessible on most
Curriculum Corner
Strapped for lesson
ideas? This section
might help.
For each subject area
you will find resources
like blogging project
ideas and links to other
teachers’ blogs.
Here is a video put out by Edublogs
about ways to use their site.
Ideas for blogging in the classroom
Post newspaper articles
for students to read &
respond to.
Articles can even be used
as jumping off points for
a creative writing activity.
With this particular news
story, I would ask
students to write about
what happened before
the stabbing. They would
be asked to describe the
situation, the characters,
and the cause of the
altercation.
Ideas… (continued)
Post pictures or videos for
students to respond to.
Here, I would ask students to
freewrite, using questions to
help guide them, about my
personal photographs from
Auschwitz. I didn’t tell them
where the photos were taken
because this activity will lead
into learning about the
Holocaust before we begin
reading Night by Elie Wiesel.
Instead, they’re asked to imagine
what this place could be.
Ideas… (continued)
Webquests are great
alternatives to seat
work and traditional
research assignments.
Post questions for
students to answer in
their blogs that require
internet research to be
done.
These questions can be
used as an introduction
to a topic, like I’ve done
here.
Ideas… (continued)
Photojournaling is a fun way to get students
writing. You could have students document their
lives with one picture per day.
The trick to
avoiding the
dreaded cat
photo shoot is to
make students
write about why
they chose a
picture and
explain what
makes it
significant.
Ideas… (continued)
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Online discussions
Student collaboration (like a class newspaper)
Peer editing & feedback on creative writing
Communicating with parents (newsletter)
Displaying student work for parents to see
Creating online portfolios of student work
Evaluating Students’ Blogs
Since evaluating every piece of writing on a student’s blog would be
quite time consuming I would recommend breaking assignments
into categories like these:
• Freewrites
• Reflective writing (on poems, newspaper articles, short stories,
etc.)
• Feedback & constructive criticism on other students’ work
However, I believe assignments like webquests,
photojournaling projects and creative writing deserve to be
assessed on an individual basis since they are much larger than the
in-class “seat work” represented on the list above.
Feel free to visit the Edublog that I put
together for the purposes of testing
out the site – click here