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.
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