Kid Blog offers students a collaborative environment where they can creatively demonstrate understanding of content.
Community Review for Fanschool
My Take
Kidblog is a valuable tool that gives students a safe environment to publish their writing about assigned or chosen topics for an audience of their peers. Blogging allows students to post for a purpose, as well as build upon their digital citizenship skill.
How I Use It
I use Kidblog to write about topics we are covering in class, as well as topics that are chosen by the students. We also do writing challenges that are more structured. In all blog posts I require students to include tags, links, images, or videos and most importantly to give credit for resources they find on other sites. Students are required to read others posts and make comments that can support or improve their peers writing. What works best is having students pull names to make sure every students blog post has a reader and critique. Knowing someone will read your posts creates a purpose for writing and many times students will work just a little harder to impress. Another feature I like with this blog is the ability to share the student's blog account with the parent. Expectations need to be very clear, but should not be set in stone. Things will need to change as the teacher becomes more experienced with using blogging as a writing tool with students.