Kidblog is a great tool for developing digital writers in a secure, yet collaborative, setting.
Community Review for Fanschool
My Take
Standardized state writing assessments have gone digital, yet many classrooms are still stuck in traditional paper and pencil mode. As an introduction to safe, secure, online writing, Kidblog is a hit! Each student in a class is given their own blog page within the umbrella of the whole class blog (think individual pages in one big book). Students can then use the tool to complete numerous writing tasks, stored in one secure place. Kidblog is internet based, so accessible from various locations at school and at home. Looking for classroom collaboration? Students and teachers can comment on each others' posts to share ideas, editing suggestions, etc. Further, classrooms can branch out and connect with other Kidblog classrooms to share blogs making a richer, deeper collaborative, social environment.
How I Use It
I have used Kidblog to help several fourth and fifth grade classes get a 'jump start' into the digital writing world. We set up class blogs with individual student blogs within each class. Students were walked through the basics of how to create a blog post and save it; editing posts before publishing them; digital manners; and finally how to properly comment on others' posts to give them constructive help on how to make their posts better. In this way, students were working through all of the steps of formal writing, but in digital form withOUT paper and pencil. I had a lot of success helping both students and teachers make the jump into 21st century writing. Knowing that they could still go through a 'regimented' process of writing prior to publishing (submitting a final copy) helped many teachers make the leap to 21st century writing.