How to Blog like a Genius!
Guiding Concepts
Student Blogs will be used to:
- create class discussion
- reflect on their learnings
- learn digital citizenship
- practice writing skills
Discussion Board
A class discussion can be implemented to start off this learning segment. Have a classroom discussion with your students to help students understand the ideas and concepts of blogging. First, ask the students to share if they know what blogging is. Expand on the students thoughts and responses, thus telling the students a blog is website of entries. Blogging is the act of writing a post for a blog. It is
very similar to a daily journal. A blogger is the person who writes content for
a blog. A “blogger” generally blogs about their lives, ideas, and opinions. Furthermore, tell the students that during Genius Hour they will be creating blogs to share their experiences and opinions about their projects.
Evaluation Tool(s)
Paper Blog
To introduce the students to blogging, for their first blog I had the students create a paper blog to help them better understand the concepts of blogging. I encouraged the students to have fun with this activity and be creative. (See activity instructions below)
Check out some of the examples of my students blogs!
At the end of each Genius Hour Week, students will also blog about their experiences for the week using Kidblog. To see my students blog examples, click here.
[Note: these prompts were used to gage students reflections throughout their project(s) and could be changed to better suit your own students projects.]
[Note: these prompts were used to gage students reflections throughout their project(s) and could be changed to better suit your own students projects.]
Planning Tools
Kidblog is a website designed teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog. Students can publish posts and participate in academic discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs and user accounts. Teachers may set up a class and their own student blogs. With Kidblog, teachers monitor and control all activity within their classroom blogging community.
In Kidblog, click create an account, enter the necessary information, then create your class adding all your students and their passwords. (I used the same password "genius hour" for the entire class). Also, if you wish, you may set the blogs to be approved before appearing on the website.
For students to add a blog post, simply have students click on log in on the top right corner, find their name, put in their password, and click on new post. There, students can then add the title and start writing their blog. (If you click on the purple "kidblog" above, it will take you to the kidblog webpage).
See below picture of what your Kidblog Classroom will look like after students have posted.
In Kidblog, click create an account, enter the necessary information, then create your class adding all your students and their passwords. (I used the same password "genius hour" for the entire class). Also, if you wish, you may set the blogs to be approved before appearing on the website.
For students to add a blog post, simply have students click on log in on the top right corner, find their name, put in their password, and click on new post. There, students can then add the title and start writing their blog. (If you click on the purple "kidblog" above, it will take you to the kidblog webpage).
See below picture of what your Kidblog Classroom will look like after students have posted.