It's been quite an ordeal, setting this all up, but it seems to have been worth it. The kids are loving it so far. ("So far"... they've only set their blogs up and some have posted one topic! LOL) We'll be working on our first "official" posts next week, so stay tuned for that...
Here's what I've learned so far on this journey...
- GMail and Yahoo! mail have account limits. Once you register a certain amount (10 for Gmail and 13 for Yahoo!), your IP address is flagged as a spammer and you're completely locked out. Yahoo!, however, will "unlock" your IP address after 24-hours and you may continue. (If you have a large number of students, this can be an extremely time-consuming process!)
- ePals is a fantastic site that offers FREE, monitored (seriously monitored, too!) student accounts. There seems to be no limit - I've registered roughly 100 students. The process is pretty user-friendly, as well. (I give this site 2 thumbs up, 4 gold stars, or whatever works for ya!)
- Blogger.com has the word verification system set up during the registration process. It is a COMPLETE pain in the rump because after 2 or 3 accounts, it makes you re-enter the password and word (which you can barely read half the time) 6 or 7 times before it will actually register the account. It takes FOREVER!
- Blogger.com will also lock a batch of blogs and flag them as SPAM blogs. This happened to my entire 4th period class, who I registered in one sitting. There is an "unlock request" on the account's dashboard, but it can take up to 48 hours for them to review and unlock it.
- Even with the amount of time it took, I contend it is MUCH easier to set them up for the students so all they have to do is make them pretty before they start blogging. I decided to walk my 6th- and 8th-periods through the entire process, letting them do it all, but it was way more aggravation than it was worth.
- The entire project would be much more effective with a class set of laptops; however, we have to do the best with what we have, right?
- Parents are much more comfortable with the entire idea when they know the e-mail is monitored and the blogs are private. (Blogger.com offers a few levels of blog privacy.)
- The most important thing I've learned, in my opinion, is that the kids love it. Kids that refuse to write in a notebook were thrilled to type something up and post it - especially my ESOL kids. (Many had the Google translator open in another window - this helped them out quite a bit.)
So, it seems to be working out pretty well so far! I'll definitely keep you posted as the weeks go on.
Posts
Deana- Have you ever looked into Thinkquest? It is great and might be able to meet your needs in an easier way. You do have to go through an application process and get principal approval... but it can stay with you (and your kids) for years. http://www.thinkquest.org/en/
ReplyDeleteHeather,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the resource! I'm done getting everything set up for this year, so I'll keep that on file for next year! I know it sounds like this was a difficult process, but in reality, it wasn't all that bad. Now that I've gone through it once, I have the experience to know what (and what NOT) to do next time! I think the best tool I found (thanks to Judy Trask!) was ePals.com. What a Godsend that turned out to be!