6 Most Important Steps To Effective Student Blogging

6 Most Important Steps To Effective Student Blogging

In its simplest form, blogging is simply a type of online journaling. In a classroom setting, it can be a highly effective tool to help students learn new topics, share their thoughts, and engage with others.

However, student blogging is still significantly different than traditional blogging where you write about your personal experiences or what you’re passionate about. You also don’t need to worry about marketing or continuously improving your SEO campaign either. It’s also important that you make sure your students are safe and don’t do anything online that’s inappropriate.

Here are the six most important steps to effective student blogging:

1. Choose A Good Blogging Platform

The first thing you need to do is choose a reliable and easy-to-use Web-based blogging platform. Specific examples of blogging platforms that are commonly used by the educational community include LiveJournal and Blogger.

2. Set The Rules

It’s important that you set the ground rules for your students before you let them begin blogging. Spend some classroom time

informing them of how to post or comment on the blog, the do’s and don’ts, and what the goals of using the blog are.

It needs to be made clear to them that the blog is an opportunity for educational advancement and to engage with one another.

It is not an opportunity for bullying or any other kind of inappropriate behavior.

3. Allow Your Students To Explore The Blog

Even if you teach your class every detail of how to use the blog, the best way for them to learn will still be a hands-on

experience. Therefore, devote some class time to allowing your students to use the blog on a computer and write test posts and comments.

4. Work With Parents

Inform the parents of your students that you are using the blog and send them the same information that you told your students. Parents will always feel appreciated being kept up-to-date on what’s happening in the classroom and seeing how their children are learning.

5. Connect With Another Class

As long as your school is fine with it, you can communicate with other teachers who teach the same subjects as you and see if they wouldn’t mind connecting your two classes together via the blogging platform. While the teachers can certainly be ones from your same school, they can also be teachers from schools in other parts of the country as well. The advantage to this is that one class will be able to share thoughts with one another that the other class wouldn’t have thought of.

6. Challenge Your Students

Perhaps the biggest benefit to student blogging is it gives you the chance to challenge your students. Hold weekly challenges on the platform that forces students to use their brains, and encourage them to hold online discussions, share journal entries, and interact with one another.

Blogging With Your Students

All in all, as long as you set the boundaries and enforce them accordingly, blogging can be a great educational opportunity for your students.