While I was assessing the plethora of blogging platforms that exist out there and that can be used for education, I came across a bunch of really cool and really helpful information at Edublogger. Here, there are a number of great tools and resources for using Edublogs as a blogging platform for teachers and students.
As part of their Student Blogging Challenge, Edublogger has set up a number of weekly challenges. Each challenge highlights a specific aspect of Blogging and its use by educators.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Edublogs as it randomly inserts advertising into the copy of the post (see image below). This is one aspect to be aware of if choosing to use Edublogs as your blogging platform.
One benefit of Edublogs (over some) is that you can create a class blog and then invite student users to it. This is a little more cumbersome with platforms such as Blogger and WordPress as you have to follow each individual blog separately (this can be avoided with the hosted version of WordPress). Edublogs, in fact, is a WordPress platform itself so if you are currently a WordPress user, you will find the inner workings of Edublogs very familiar.
Ning (which I will write about shortly) also allows for users to be added as members – thus creating a self-contained learning network. More on this soon.
Check out these great links to the Edublogger Student Blogging Challenge.
The first post, especially, gives some great rationale for blogging and provided some example links to check out. *Remember that these instructions are for Edublogs only.
Glad you like my posts on Setting up Class blogs. While some of the how-to instructions are specific for Edublogs I’ve tried to make it include information that help educators with whatever platform. For example, Week 2 – Setting up your blogging rules and guidelines.
Regarding the ads it is important to clarify that ads aren’t displayed on all Edublogs.org blogs. There are three different types of Edublogs blog – free Edublogs, Edublogs Supporter blogs and Edublogs Campus blogs.
The only blogs that show ads are the free Edublogs blogs and these can be disabled by an Edublogs Supporter blog.
With an Edublogs Supporter blog ads are automatically disabled on that blog and can be used to disable ads on up to 30 other blogs. While Edublogs Campus blogs are totally free of ads.