My students began blogging today. As mentioned earlier, we are taking baby steps, but baby has taken several steps already. There were a few obstacles and unexpected little glitches, but went very well. The kids are incredibly excited.
To begin, I had to create an account for each child. As a security measure, registration was set so that users had to be created by an admin, rather than allowing anyone to create a login. Users must be created one by one–no big deal with my small class size. Unfortunately, WPMU requires a unique email address for each user. While a few children had email accounts, most did not. Others could use a parent’s email addresses. A surprising number had no access to the Internet at home. I ended up creating email accounts to receive the passwords that WordPress generated. Entering a class of 25 students would be a chore. I’m sure there is a way to do this through the SQL database, but that is beyond me at this point.
Once I dealt with this, all went fairly well. I guided them through the log in process on the class blog. Then we created profiles (after a long discussion of Internet safety), and changed their passwords to something secure, yet memorable. Next, I showed them how to comment upon a post that I had created. After they commented on two posts, we went on to the next step.
Since they caught on so quickly, I created a blog for each student. I had to give them admin access to their sites to allow them to customize them with templates and widgets. For the sake of security, I set the each blog’s privacy setting so that they only could be viewed by me and the individual student. Once done with customization, I will set their privileges to contributor, and open their sites to the world. With this setup. I will be the administrator for their sites and will moderate all posts and comments.
Overall, I think I have the security figured out and I am beginning to establish an administrative workflow. The kids feel empowered and energized. I also have one one of our high school teachers ready to do the same with one of his elective classes.
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Tags: blog, classroom, wordpress, wordpressmu
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