Chapter 3: Get Started! (pp.43-54) by: Will Richardson

• The true potential of blogs in school are when students and teachers use them as publishing tools. (p. 43)
• Take some time to read some good blogs
• Start at: SupportBlogging.com
• Edublog award site:http://tinyurl.com/62crba
• start with links
• annotate the links
• write more in depth about what you are reading

BLOGGING WITH STUDENTS (pp.45-46)

• Get students reading blogs
• Prepare a list of Weblogs with appropriate content and look at some of these sites with the students
• Let students respond to these blogs
• Post a question each day
• Have small groups of students start creating posts to the same Weblog
• Give each student a blog

BLOG SAFETY

• Make sure that students, parents, administrators are clear about the expectations and the reasoning behind it (p. 46)
• Make sure everyone has the proper permission (p. 46)
• Use only first name of students or pseudonyms for students with unique names (p. 46)
• Teach kids never to publish personal identifiers about themselves or others (p. 46)
• Teach kids to know the process of reporting problems in their blogs, whether technical or content related (p. 46)
• Teach staff on the use and purpose of blogs (p. 47)
• Bud Hunt has a great resource for documents of these types at his "Blogging Policies and Resources Wiki" http://tinyurl.com/5y919n (p. 47)
• Respond to what students write
• Students can self-select their best blogging posts, reflect on those selections and include those reflections in an overall evaluation of their Weblog use (p. 47)

BLOGGING STEP BY STEP

• http://www.blogger.com/
• signing up for a blog at Blogger is easy
• the address of your site will be http://whatevernameryouchoose.blogspot.com/ (p.48)
• When you click on a blog name from the Dashboard, you'll be taken to a the page where you can create and edit posts (p. 49)
• Hit the New Post button to create a new post to the homepage (p. 49)
• "Settings" tab links you to configure how you want your comments to work (p. 50)
• Have students save all of their posts as drafts until the teacher gives them permission to post (p. 50)

What are some great blogs that you have read?