For those of you that are unaware of or haven’t accessed your free Edublogs account since December, they’ve gone through some pretty interesting changes. Most of these changes hinge on the idea of needing to pay bills(understandable).  It may be a hard pill to swallow if you had made lesson plans to use their free accounts to host a classroom blog since the switch happened mid-year around December. There are now ads, a huge cut in storage space, and several features that let you manage your users have been cut. …

We’ve talked frequently regarding student blogging here at TTB. Until now the tips have been based on research and best practices from other teachers. As of today, however, my student are putting their finishing touches on their first blog. Together they have pieced together about 50 brief technology tutorials which can be checked out at http://www.studenttechspot.edublogs.org
Needless to say, I will be refining my tips and blogging about the process in the near future. I think I have slimmed down the process and hopefully made it less intimidating for teachers as well …

I realized after posting the poll about Twitter that it may be unknown to some exactly what Twitter is. Describing Twitter isn’t so much hard, as it is difficult to explain without leaving people wondering why anyone would want to use it… which is a question most people ask, and only try out of curiosity. The fact is, there isn’t one way to use twitter.
Let me give you a brief walk through.
I signed up for twitter, and now I have an empty page with a little box at the top …

In the past we have covered several resources on student blogging such as guides for teachers and blogging platforms. It’s truly something that we, here at TTB, feel is one of the next giant leaps in education. The ability to provide students with a global audience for their creative and analytical thoughts can provide an impact that is extremely hard to accomplish within the four walls of any school building. With that in mind, it was exciting to sit down with E-Pals’ Rita Oates, their Vice President of Education.

We’ll be in Orlando this week live blogging at the Florida Educational Technology Conference. The cold climate will be missed, but I guess we’ll endure the heat to bring you the latest news from the conference. It’s one of the largest Ed Tech conferences in the states, so stay tuned Wednesday through Friday for the latest updates.

Having a classroom blog set up for students to publish their creativity is an incredible way to generate excitement and quality content. But what about when you have hundreds of students or a group of younger students that aren’t quite ready for writing their own articles? Kate from Wisconsin sent in a excellent tip for dealing with such an occasion(in her case 600+ young students).

The biggest impact that a blog can have  is seen when the student realizes that the content they are contributing is being read outside of the school walls. The truth is that most student blogs don’t have what it takes to make it outside these walls. Either the students aren’t creating works with a possible audience in mind, or the blog isn’t set up to have the visibility it deserves. Here, we will cover some of the steps you can take to create visibility, and in turn, excitement.

*UPDATE*

Blogging is nothing new to students, but students blogging as a part of class is. It can be a daunting task to any teacher, especially those that aren’t exceptionally tech savvy. To remedy that, we have put together an easy-to-understand guide for setting up a teacher administered student blog. The goal of the tutorial is to guide any teacher through the process of setting up their first blog for students, and steps them through how to gain the most out of security.
This can be an amazing opportunity, and for children …

Blogging isn’t a new phenomenon for students, but student blogging is indeed a new, and sometimes scary, phenomenon to schools. Especially those schools that aren’t used to student published webpages. A suggestion might be to set up a student’s first classroom blog to have limited access. Here is the recommendation.