Community reviews for WordPress.com

WordPress is an ideal website for bloggers, writers, etc. It is also a realistic teaching tool. I think the students enjoy tinkering with the features, especially those who are technologically savvy. I keep a blog as well because I think as a teacher I should model what I desire from my pupils. I find WordPress relatively intuitive, but a bit clunky with images. That could be my user error, however.

If you are looking for a user-friendly place for students to blog, Wordpress.com is a great option. It's not as customizable as the paid site (Wordpress.org), or other custom domains, but if you need basic functions and lots of plugin options, Wordpress.com has more than enough features. Plus, it's so easy and quick to set up, you can test it out on your own (or model the set-up live for your students).

WordPress has many features and is very powerful. The final product can be very impressive and with alot of templates, widgets and features, you can create blog, webpages, etc. that really suit your vision. It is also very easy to maintain and change skins, with many templates available. However, while the initial set up was quick, I found the learning curve intense to get the page set up the way I wanted, taking some time with many things to get used to. My more tech minded students took to it quickly, however, some others really took a long time to get going. But once set up, the students were pleased with their final product and that was an incentive to continue using it.

I teach in a 1:1 iPad situation. If you were teaching in a similar situation, you could have every student download the app and then create a blog . Students could blog responses to literature of many varieties. Teacher could then facilitate student-driven discussion through the comments section.

Wordpress is a blogging tool that has a sleek, professional look, but it is not an easy tool to use. You must be ready to train students and provide plenty of practice time. This is best used as a classroom communication tool, as it gives your online presence a professional polished appearance.

Most of my writing courses involve students in creating blogs where they learn to write for an online audience while interpreting class material. While blogspot is a good interface for more web-savvy students, I find wordpress the best interface for getting students going with a blog with the smallest learning curve.

I use wordpress for an education project blog. It works really well; however, it is somewhat complicated for student use, even in secondary school. Teachers wishing to blog with their students in educational settings (both primary, and secondary) are better off exploring http://edublogs.org, the world's largest education blogging platform. While this service is NOT free, the technical support is second to none; and the subscription unlocks better themes and features which teachers and students will find useful.

Wordpress is a great website and blogging platform because it is free and user-friendly, even for educators who have never created a website. The dashboard on the back-end is easy to navigate and arranged in a logical format so you can figure out how to add content, create menus, and adjust your website settings just by clicking and trying things. Wordpress is also highly customizable. You can choose your own themes, widgets, and backgrounds to suit your needs and goals. One downside to the Wordpress platform is the ads although you can purchase their new classroom version or use something like Edublogs, which runs on Wordpress but is made for educators, to avoid this. You can also add a “subscribe” widget so that parents and families can automatically receive updates if you are posting about your class.

This review is for the WordPress.com website, not the freely downloaded software from WordPress.org. The WordPress.com community is a rich source of information and thought-provoking discussions. However, it's lack of filtering options for age appropriate material is problematic for using the website as a student blogging platform without adult supervision. It is no different than turning kids loose on the unfiltered Internet without supervision. It could be useful for classroom blogs, supervised by an adult, but do not allow young children to use the website unsupervised.