Choosing a Blogging Program

A number of various programs have become available over the past two years for educators to rely on for classroom blogging. Even though Moodle offers its own blogging options, using a free blogging program is advantageous in many ways. Most importantly, they are easily accessible and affordable to students.

Currently, most educators rely on one of three programs. Whichever program you choose, however, you choose one program for all of your students to use. This allows you to set certain permissions and to follow blogs easily.

Explore all three to decide what works best for you and your students. Accessing Pulsed's updated comparison of the following two programs may help you decide which blogging program works best for you.

Blogger.com is probably one of the most widely used programs because of its user-friendly features, but there are some who feel the program is limited. Purchased by Google, the program offers easy set-up and access to free template designs. Using Blogger's Blogger.draft options, users can access a number of templates, backgrounds, and themes to enhance the creative impact of the blog. The other great feature of Blogger is the dashboard that allows users to view and follow blogs easily. One drawback, however, is the minimal control of access. Blogs are in the public domain.

WordPress is a free program that offers some features that make work better for you. Much like blogger, WordPress offers bloggers different templates and posting options; however, some bloggers complain about that upgrade charges. Make sure WordPress covers your needs so that students don't have to make costly upgrades for classroom purposes.

Bloggertalk mentions that, “The main advantage of Word Press is that it provides flexibility and it allows you to be far more creative because its an open source script meaning it can be freely distributed and manipulated by anyone. So if you want the script to do a specific task you can either find an existing plugin or hire a programmer to create one for you.” Also, Akers states, “if you want to start your own blog and generate free traffic over a long period of time without any problems you should definitely use Word Press on your own website. Its far safer and more reliable than Blogger and will give you the flexibility and creativity you need.”

LiveJournal also offers users free housing for blogs. It has the look and feel of Facebook to some degree, buy many students prefer LiveJournal and use it exclusively.

Powered by Wordpress, Edublogs also offers educators a viable option in the classroom. Popular with more K-12 teachers, the program does offer many of the same features the other programs offer. Some indicate that navigating the site is a bit tricky especially when it comes to adding users.

ClassBlogMeister is also a free platform that is for educators only.  Class Blogmeister was created by David Warlick, teacher, author, and speaker, and The Landmark Project. He designed this blog platform with the needs of teachers and their students in mind. This blog platform is rarely blocked by school filters because it has built-in safety features that do not come as the default on other platforms.

Disadvantages of Using Blogs

As with most social media, blogs may present problems for both instructors and students.  Therefore, instructors need to take care to consider some of the following problems when integrating blogs into the classroom:

1). Security, privacy, and access of information may cause problems for student.
2). Informal nature of blogs may not foster deeper meaning and critical reflection.
3). Blog themes may segregate by gender (men tend to write editorial and technical blogs, while women write personal blog).
4.) Students may not want to learn another technology.
5.) If not specific with instructions, blogs don't foster much interaction.
6). Blogs are usually opinion-based, so students have a difficult time distinguishing between high-quality and poorly researched blogs.
7). Can be time consuming because of aggregation (RSS)
8). Published immediately, may get an immediate response

With careful assignment construction, instructors can overcome many of the problems that blogs can present.  Three main areas may need thorough consideration, however, before students are given the green light to blog:

Security Issues: Close Community

Access: Permission Rights

Free Expression Conflicts: Defamation, Libel, Infringement

SOURCE: Trimarco, Ruth.  The Use of Blogs in the College Classroom. 

Student Benefits of Blogging

According to Dr. Christopher Long of Penn State, students benefit in several ways from blogging in the classroom.



1). COMMUNITY BUILDING: When instructors empower students to participate, blogs that are accessible to all offer the opportunity for cultivating and community building not only in the classroom but beyond it as well. 

2). FOSTERS SKILLS:  Posting allows students to not only contribute to the conversation but to take the discussion to a higher level by extending beyond general course material. As they begin to realize and recognize the power and impact of their posts, students begin to craft with more care.  Consequently, they learn how to construct posts that offer well-organized, critical insight.

Long notes that blogs empower students to think of themselves as more than writers but as publishers who can have an impact on peers but the community as a whole. 

3). DIVERSITY OF EXPRESSION: Blogs offer an array of ways for students to communicate.  They can add posts, comments, podcasts (auditory learners), images, and video (visual learners).  Because students generate material, they decide how to best community their ideas.

4). BLURS BOUNDARIES:  Long notes that blogging blurs many boundaries.

Student	Teacher
Semester	Lifetime
Practice	Theory
Classroom	World

Instructor Benefits of Blogging

Blogging offers instructors an engaging way to facilitate classroom management, collaboration, discussion, and portfolio building.  Because blogs offer students the chance to move beyond the classroom virtually, blogs offer instructors several benefits to support a number of pedagogies and goals for writing as well as content courses. As a publishing platform, blogs offer an engaging medium to shape student thinking about ideas, how to shape ideas, and the ethics and moral surrounding the posting of those ideas.  The following ideas are some of the more obvious benefits of blogging:

• Free and accessible publishing platform
• Interactivity as students can both post and comment
• Joint de-centered, authorship; students can be tasked to provide content
• Useful in any type of class for reading and writing
• Facilitates any type of communication between instructor and student
• Option of community blogs can work like bulletin boards or discussion forums
• Nurtures discourse among instructors and students
• Provides effective forum for collaboration and discussion
• Motivates students to take ownership of their own writing
• Creates opportunities for students to consider the writing process
• Gives students tools that enable scaffolding, mentoring, and peer review