Safe blogging

There are somethings we can do to guarantee the students' safe blogging:

1. Make sure the students understand the importance of not sharing certain information, like their full name, name of the school they attend, address, age or phone number with people they (or you) have never met in person.


2. Screen what the students plan to post before they post it. Seemingly innocuous information, such as a school mascot and town photo, could be put together to reveal where the author goes to school.


3. Blogs are places that the students tend to let their guard down. Share with students the importance of not telling everyone exactly what they are doing, or do on a regular basis through their blog. Encourage them instead to stick to “social” information, such as music, movie and other wide spread interests.


4. If the students are active in chatrooms, ask that they not use their real name as their blog or chat name that is displayed to other users.


5. Establish rules for online use with your kids and be diligent.


6. Ask yourself (and instruct your kids to do the same) if you are you comfortable showing any of the content to a stranger. If in doubt, have them take it out.


7. Evaluate the blogging service and find out if it offers private, password-protected blogs.


8. Save the Web address of your child's blog and review it on a regular basis.


9. Check out other blogs to find positive examples for your kids to emulate.


10. Tell the students not to post any provocative pictures.


11. Let the students know what they post online is permanent. Teach them to change privacy settings when necessary.


12. Ask the students to keep blogs positive and don't use them for slander or attack others.

Something more about the safely blogging can be found in the following link:

Safely Blogging

Using blogs in teaching

It's really an exciting idea to use blogs in our daily teaching, and I cannot wait to try it in my own classroom. Here are some of the ways I think I can try later after reading the books.

    Firstly, we can use the blogs as online filing cabinet. The students can post their work online for peer and teacher response. They can archive their work online, and this creates a space for an online portfolio of work. And they can refer back to it anytime they want. It is really cool because the students can trace back the way they made improvement and grew up by revisiting their blogs. And it should give them a sense of fulfillment. At the same time, it is easier for the instructor to give in-time suggestions or grade to the students. Or in other words, the students and the teachers can interact with each other better.

    We can also use blogs to create spaces where students can collaborate with others online. Students can use the blogs to share information with their peers, teachers, or even some other person like a author, etc. In this way we can coorperatively accomplish a task or share the information with each other without seeing each other. It is good because in some situation it is really difficult to find a time available to everyone to have a face-to-face meeting.

    I also think using blogs in classroom is a non-stop trend of moving curriculum to a digital, online environment. As teachers, we can post course curriculum, syllabus, class rules, homewok assignments, rubrics, handouts, and presentations on the blog for the convinience of both instructors and students. In this way, the students can always be clear about what they need to do for the course. Thus, it is less possible for them to miss the important things of class.