Blogs and blogging in the Foundation Phase – a great boon to a modern classroom

The term blog originated from the blend of the term “web log”. It started as a way someone could voice their thoughts and opinions and share information easily online. Blogging is really much easier than it looks. A classroom blog can be easily created without any knowledge of HTML and it is a great way of sharing the life of a classroom with parents, other teachers and interested folk.

The following video is a quick, short introduction to blogging.

Why start a classroom blog

Blogs are especially useful to teachers because

You don’t need to know any html to create a blog. You simply decide on your platform (see below) and then follow the prompts. Thereafter all you need is the Internet, information that you wish to share and a camera for visuals.
Parents would love to know the finer detail of what is happening in class. They enjoy hearing about the class’s different activities via and bog and they often show their friends and family the information.
Some teachers encourage their class to have their own blogs and have their students’ blogs linked to their own blog for easy access. This is a great way to teach and prepare students for digital citizenship.
Teachers can create world-wide friends with teachers in other countries who also have classroom blogs.

What information can be posted on a classroom blog?

Here is a quote from a great post in Educational Technology and Mobile learning. You can see the full, excellent post here.

“Ways to use blogs in your classroom

Here are some ways on how teachers can use blogs in their classrooms:

Provide further assignments for students to work on
Have students work in small groups to write and post summaries of content covered in class to build a compendium for content covered over a semester
Get students to do their writing assignments in the form of blog posts
Encourage students to post comments on each others postings
Use blogs for peer learning. Get students to read their colleagues writings and underline spelling and grammatical mistakes
Use blogs for classroom projects where students can include videos, clips, audio,, text and images
Teachers can create a specific section just for website links and references to other interesting content online.
Use activities, games, puzzles to enrich students learning experiences
Use blogs to conduct an online survey in relation to your students learning needs. You can also include parents in the surveys. Check out these free survey tools for teachers.
Post your classroom guidelines and code of conduct on your classroom blog for students to review
Publish a list of the objectives ( general as well as specific goals )
Challenge your students to write, record and post tutorials about certain concepts of things you teach them
Use a section in your blog for classroom news where to communicate the general classroom news. Work with students to identify the kinds of information they would like to share with their parents, then engage them in writing and posting daily or weekly news updates
Post weekly challenges such as a riddle or brainteaser that requires your students to think creatively and critically. Ask students to post their answers on the blog then discuss the solutions with the whole class at the end of the week. This will tremendously improve their problem-solving skills
Again use your blog as a communicative tool both with your students and their parents.”

Blogging platforms

For a teacher to easily create a blog he or she would start of by using one of these user-friendly platforms.

Blogge This is a free weblog publishing tool from Google, for sharing text, photos and video. This is undoubtedly the most user-friendly blogging platform available and what I like about it is there is ample space. You can set up as many blogs as you want and right from your Google account.
Kidblog This is a great site for K-12 teachers providing a safe, simple blogging platform which allows students to share their voice with a broader audience. This platform is very popular in primary schools as it is easy to log in to and you can keep it as private as you want to.
Edublogs This is a very popular free, educational blogging service. It is a WordPress blog and lets you easily create and manage student and teacher blogs, quickly customize and include videos. One drawback is that space is limited so one eventually has to buy space. One advantage if you buy space is that you can create your student blogs from a section in your blog and have more control over them.
WordPress This is another useful free, blogging platform for students and teachers, slightly more complicated that Blogger and Kidblogs.

There are other blogging plaforms but these four are the most popular. Take a look at these primary svhool blogs sorted by blogging platform: http://goo.gl/CsVax

Examples of blogs

The best way to get started is to look at other teacher blogs of which there are many! Personally I have learned SO much from other blogs. Incidentally, a trend I have noticed of late is that many teacher bloggers, especially in the United States, have wonderful blogs and they also use the opportunity to sell some of the lessons they have created through Teachers Pay Teachers. To be honest, I often find this a bit irritating as it puts a commercial slant on a blog.

Grade R or Kindergarten blogs

I think it is wonderful when teachers of young children share their ideas via a blog. My favourite Kindergarten blog is that of Matt Gomez: kindergarten teacher (from Texas) http://goo.gl/FcmMRW. He does such amazing things in his classroom and his blog is well worth exploring. He says that his goal is to use blog posts and videos to help parents understand the learning that is happening in their classroom. His hope is parents can support or even expand on that learning at home.he feels that informing parents about our learning is important at all levels, but especially for young kids. I love this quote from Matt Gomez ‘Kindergarten have only ever known the technological world.’

Here are some more samples of interesting Kindergarten blogs:

Kindergarten rocks http://mrsosterman.blogspot.com/
Miss Kindergarten: http://goo.gl/MEpqrV
Time for Kindergarten http://www.time4kindergarten.com/
My very own circus – a Kindergarten blog https://myveryowncircus.wordpress.com/
Blogging with love and laughter http://teachingwithloveandlaughter.blogspot.com/
Mrs Watsons K/1/2/3 blog http://mrswatson.ca/

Further places to find collections of Kindergarten blogs on the Net are: https://www.schoolnet.org.za/p/kindergarten-blogs.html

I also came across a Pinterest board collection of Kindergarten blogs: http://goo.gl/ho5XY4

Grade 1 blogs

My all time favourite as far as Foundation Phase bloggers is Ms. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog (for student showcase) http://mscassidysclass.edublogs.org/ You’ll notice she lists all her Grade 1 student blogs down the side of this blog for easy access. Cathy Cassidy also has a blog for teachers where she explains a lot of what she does. Here teachers’blog can be found at http://kathycassidy.com/ Primary Preoccupation

Other interesting Grade 1 blogs:

Peeking Into Division 18 http://goo.gl/nIZ3NT
Mrs Morrison’s classroom http://mrsmorrisonsroom.blogspot.com/
Miss Smith’s 1st Grade blog http://misssmiths1stgrade.blogspot.com/
Grade 1 owls: http://mrsvanrees.blogspot.com/
The kinderkids blog: http://thekinderkids.edublogs.org/