Blogging in the school library

One of the barriers for using general blogging tools is that of assuring the quality and appropriateness of student publishing. BlogMeister is a blogging tool that allows the teacher to evaluate, comment on, and publish student blog articles in a controlled environment. It is used to promote the communication skills of students. The teacher creates a blogging account for his/her own publishing and then creates accounts for the students to publish their blogs under the teacher’s supervision.

With BlogMeister, students can write their blogs over a period of time, but the blog is not published until the teacher has reviewed and approved the article. Students cannot directly publish their work. When the student indicates that his/her work is ready for publishing, the teacher is notified by e-mail that the student’s article is ready for comment. The teacher can then either publish the work or review and comment on the improvements the student can make to the article. The teacher comments suggesting further revision become a permanent part of the article for the student’s continued reading. Check Class BlogMeister for a simple explanation of BlogMeister.

A comparative review of blogging tools found some problems with BlogMeister. It does not have a WYSIWYG editor. It does not provide a photo or audio hosting service, causing the students and teachers to use outside hosting services.

A positive feature of BlogMeister is that it does put tag clouds (clusters of keywords) on the blog that are automatically extracted from blog text. The tag clouds are then linked to other teacher and student blogs on BlogMeister who use the same key words.

Blogs can be used to manage a classroom curriculum and communication. Blogs can be used to:

1. teach the student such skills as keyboarding
2. teach the student to journal
3. publish a current classroom newspaper with no delays
4. collaborate in literature circles
5. collaborate in a writing assignment
6. comment on newspaper articles or current events
7. solve the math problem of the day
8. have a class discussion
9. post texts for students to read, research, reflect, and then respond to
10. publish homework, reminders, and notices
11. publish ongoing teacher impressions about the context of what is being learned in the classroom

Just about anything that can be assigned in person by the teacher can be assigned on a blog.

The advantage of BlogMeister is that it allows the teacher to comply with CIPA while teaching the student appropriate ways to use the Internet for social networking.