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All blogs are running with only a few glitches. Getting things going with the kids was not as easy as I hoped. When 24 kids all log on to their blogs at once, things become very slow. It took them forever to change their theme pages, as they loaded so very,very slowly. We certainly didn’t accomplish much, but there was a definitely a lot of interest. Several students added to their blogs at home. They often ask to login to their blog during class time whenever they have a few minutes. It would certainly be nice to have more than two computers in the class.

The second class that I brought into the lab to blog was much more successful. Only half of the class went on at once until their theme pages were complete. After that, all ran smoothly. Several had time to introduce themselves and make comments on other blogs. As with the first class, they are very eager. Both classes have really enjoyed making up aliases for themselves.

After the end of the first week in blogging, all is going well. Not everyone has had a chance to post any information about themselves, but I’m sure this will come with time. The exciting thing about it all is the students who post or comment to someone’s blog almost every day. They are short entries, but it definitely shows that they are interested.

I knew the most time consuming aspect of my project would be making comments to all of the students. It took me over 2 hours to respond to 44 blogs. I also had to fix one blog that wasn’t working correctly. I’m hoping things get better as I move more into a role of moderator. The blogs are set up the way I wanted them to be though. All comments go through my g-mail account so that I can monitor them. So far, I have only had to delete one. It wasn’t too bad, but we’ve been discussing about being kind to one another, and it wasn’t positive. I mentioned my feelings about it to the class and they agreed with me that it should have been deleted. It certainly makes a good opportunity for discussion.

I am noticing that a few students are prolific ‘responders’ to their classmates’ blogs. They don’t really write much, and their comments are poorly written. We’ll need to talk about the how they should be responding. A reminder is needed to ensure computer slang is not used. The students also need to be reminded not to use their friends’ names. We worked hard not to identify the kids in the beginning. Responses also shouldn’t breach this policy.

This week we talked a lot about being ’safe’ and ‘kind’ to one another. We also discussed how to delete comments if they were inappropriate. I think everyone realized that they needed to be more careful with what they said to each other. Overall, comments were positive. I noticed that a few people changed their names to make things even more anonymous. A few kids deleted comments that they didn’t feel were appropriate.

It’s difficult for the children to understand how the blogs work. When they respond to their peers, they expect the comments to go to the other person’s account, much like an email. They can’t understand why their response goes to their own blog.

We’ve been having a little bit of trouble getting the “site admin” onto some theme pages. It’s hard to figure out how to manage their pages, add new comments, and log out when this isn’t available. I’ve been helping them to add widgets to their theme page. The problem is trying to get the admin page open to make the changes. Often they need to log out, so that they can log back in to get the starting page. That’s not easy to do when there doesn’t seem to be anyway to log out. Sometimes they have to start to submit a new comment before they can find a log out link.

The students are really enjoying blogging. Several send me posts to share how much they like the opportunity. At first I wondered if it would be a positive experience as they were often confused, but it didn’t take long for them to get the hang of things. A few appear to have written few posts, but I realized today that they are just forgetting to publish them. Overall, I think the students in my class are much keener, but I was able to talk with their parents and have their support. The other class that I have for computer also have less support from their teacher. So far she hasn’t shown any interest in being a real part of the project. It would be good if I could get her on board. It certainly would be helpful to have another adult comment on the kids posts. Responding to all 44 still takes me hours. I’m hoping that my input will be less important soon.

I noticed that if you have more than one blog account it is important to log out from one before accessing the other. Sometimes I think I’m in one, but I end up at the other site. This makes a difference when commenting to sites that require email addresses. Also the identifying name is different. I need to be careful which email address is sent out as well. Most of the posts from my students go through my Google mail account, but a few responses are going to my family email. If you don’t enter an email address into the theme pages requiring one, it will choose an address for itself from your computer.

You know, blogs are great when they work properly, but otherwise it’s just a lesson in futility.
This entry has originated on Word, as once again I couldn’t get on to my blog site. In fact this is the third or fourth time that I couldn’t work with my blog. I tried to add to my site on Saturday, but Edublogs was down for maintenance. Low and behold, I couldn’t get on Sunday either. Today, I took one of my classes to the lab to work on their blog. Ha! That was a frustrating experience. We were all ready to have a snooze before any operation would go through. It was ridiculous and definitely not usual. The last message I read re: my site mentions that the server is not available. Why did they bother with maintenance? Things worked more smoothly before they worked on Edublogs.

I was really excited on Friday. It was like Christmas. One of the district’s mobile lab was delivered. I applied a few weeks ago. I’m looking forward to have less timing restrictions when using the computers. I also was able to borrow a couple of digital cameras and a musical keyboard. There’s even a projector. There are so many possibilities. I think I’ll have the kids use the computers to record themselves reading orally tomorrow. They need practice with oral reading fluency. Perhaps afterwards, others can listen to the recordings while they read along. I also want to start working on an iMovie project. Most of the kids have finished writing a story. I’d like them to publish it using iMovie. We’ve been working on taking weather data and analyzing the cloud types. Tomorrow, I’ll send the students out with the digital cameras to take pictures of the clouds.

We had parent teacher conferences this week. One of the things that came up was the blogs. One of the parents wanted to know what I thought of the process so far. I replied that although everyone was really enjoying them, the responses are not all very educationally sound. That is, the kids use a lot of slang, poor sentence structure, and are using them to socialize. A few are even making play dates at lunch. This certainly wasn’t how I had hoped they be used. Now that most of the class knows how to use them, it’s time to set up criteria so that they can be evaluated. Let’s hope I can focus their responses.

Finally, getting back into the childrens’ blogs, I could see who is really getting into this blogging. One of my brighter students has got the whole thing figured out. He has started to write multiple pages. One page is a story that he has set up so that other kids will add to it. Other pages show puzzles. He has figured out not only how to set up his own blog roll, but he has also added his favourite links to games and other websites. For this boy, blogging is not only fun, but a way to show his creativity.

I added a new student to blogging recently. To help her get started, I asked the children to leave a comment welcoming her to our blogging. I am quite impressed by their comments. They are very welcoming. Some offer to help, a few share their feelings about blogging, and one shares some things about him/herself. It’s exciting to see how positive everyone is.

I notice that the students who don’t often write a lot with paper and pencil also write very short blogs. I was hoping to see a change in this pattern, but unfortunately this has happened yet. Children who are stronger writers are definitely prolific on their blogs. Everyone continues to enjoy the assignments however.

It may be a while since I added my reflections, but we have continued to be busy with blogging. I’m starting to see a lot longer entries. One boy even added a picture of an award he won for his piano recital. It’s good to see that the parents are helping their children. I even had a comment on one of my posts that had been written by one boy’s mother. She created her own blog, so that she could add to ours.

I gave the students a choice today. They could write a story about our hamster that had escaped in their journal or on their blog. All but one went immediately for the laptops. The boy who wanted to write in his journal couldn’t find it, so instead of writing on a piece of paper, he powered up the computer.

We are learning to type our posts in Word first and then paste them onto the blog. The computers have been having spinning wheels just as the kids try to save their posts. Using Word is more stable, although one person got stuck when trying to save there too.

I don’t think I mentioned the blog comment that I recently received for one of my posts. A new blogger was added to my classes. It was one of the parents. Her son is s1109. She called herself 1109m. It was exciting for me to see how things were taking off.

I was looking through the comments of my students and discovered that his grandfather was writing to him. The boy had written about his thoughts on Remembrance Day and his grandfather was writing about his memories of WW II while growing up in Britain. Talk about making connections with those outside of the classroom.

I am glad the kids are sharing their blogs with their family members. They are private to the general public.

I am quite frustrated with the new addition of advertisements. The kids don’t understand that they were added without their control. They think someone hacked into their account and added them. Edublogs wants me to become a supporter that can pay to turn these off for up to 30 accounts. Too bad I have more than 30 to chose from. More memory is also provided which makes me tempted, as I cannot add voice recordings. I assume this takes up too much memory??

Some children feel others have written “mean” comments in their names. They have changed their passwords to try to alleviate problems. Someone recently complained that someone has entered their account again and made a comment using the f word and a word. Another student asks what the a word is. I am getting a little worried that it’s time to close things down for a while. What a shame!

Here’s a new one. I can’t add any more students without paying to become a “supporter”. A new child needs a blog, but I haven’t figured out how to add her to the rest. Hindsight tells me that “Edublogs” is not the way to go. Too bad, as the whole project is definitely a success. I just read posts kids have written while on Spring Break. Somebody even wrote while she was at her hotel in Toronto. There is no stopping several of these kids.