Calling Student Bloggers: We Want You!

Are you a student blogger? Are you willing to share what you have learned from blogging? If so, we want you!

Blogging4Kids is looking for student bloggers to write posts about blogging. Some of the topics we would love to add to the blog are:

1. Why do you like to blog?
2. What have you learned from blogging?
3. How has your attitude about learning changed since you started blogging?
4. What transformative learning experiences have you had through blogging?
5. Why should other students try blogging?
6. Why should teachers encourage student blogging?

Please leave your contact information here and I will get back to you.

I'm Ready to Have My Students Blog, What Do I Do First?

The hardest thing to do with any new endeavor is to figure out how to get started. Before I started blogging I spent several months looking through class blogs from Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. There were a lot more of those than ones in the United States at the time. I spend most of that time trying to make sense of design, options and content.

Before you ask your students to blog, you need the experience that can only come from blogging. You need to create your own. Actually, I think you should create and post on two different blogs.

The first blog you should create is a class blog. You really need to have the experience of creating something that represents your classroom, your students and yourself. You need to think carefully about the types of information you need to share, and just as importantly what you should not share. You need to think about blogging in an education context.

The second blog you should create is a passion blog. You should have the experience of writing about something you are absolutely passionate about. The entire focus of the blog should be about that one thing that makes you happier than anything else. You need to understand how important it is to be able to share something important to you, not just to someone else.

Then, after you have been writing posts for a couple months you should be ready to get your students started. Remember the lessons you have learned and share them liberally with your students. Don't forget the focus you have to make your education posts representative of the learning that happens in your classroom and also don't forget the joy you have when you are writing what you care so much about. Then you will truly understand why you need to have your students balance their blogs with content from your classroom and from their hearts. 

Authenticity and Student Blogging

What does authenticity in blogging mean? Are we talking about an authentic audience or authentic writing? I will look at both in this post.

As the co-creator of the hash tag #Comments4Kids and the guy that runs the blog, I think I have a pretty good idea about audience. When it comes to an authentic audience, the people reading the blog have to want to read it. This means you can't assign someone to read a blog and leave a comment and expect it to be an authentic experience. This does not mean you should not assign students to read and comment, just that it probably won't be authentic.

But, don't students need an authentic audience? I am not sure they need one, but I think we all hope they find one. If your goal is for your students to have authentic audiences, then you need to allow your students the time and opportunity to go and find blogs written about the topics that interest them. Explain to them that they should try to have conversations on those blogs and try to get those bloggers to then return the favor. This is about building tribes more than it is about blogging.

What does authentic blog post creating look like? Just like with an authentic audience, an authentic post has to be one the creator wants to make. Again, this does not mean you should not assign topics for the students to create posts over, just don't expect them to be authentic.

So, how do I get my students to bog authentically? The short answer is, you can't. What you can provide is time and opportunity to allow them to create posts over what they want to share. Don't expect every student to want to create content to share online either, they all won't want to do that (and that is perfectly acceptable!) The important thing is that you give them opportunities to share their stuff too.