She shared a blog that a teacher in her district is using. This teacher was using weebly. I love Weebly. I love how user friendly it is, the themes, and the simplicity yet elegant style of it. When tasked with this bloggng adventure I wanted to be a colearner with my students so therefore I wanted to use Weebly with my students as well. The logistics of getting students onto one account without everyone knowing the password or each student having their own and having to log onto individual pages to approve proved to be more of a burden than it was worth, so I am blogging with Weebly and my students are blogging with Kidblog.
Anyways, Jenny shared this teacher's blog explaining that she used it with her students, this is where my excitement rose! There is a way to use Weebly with students! Well...not so much...
The teacher posts in Weebly and students comment. Students log into the blog read the post and press comment! So simple, so smart, and still ensuring that students have a voice in a safe and focused way.
I couldn't believe it!
At first I was thinking Uh Oh! I made a mistake, I should have started with comments, simple entries, all on one interface. But now, it may be an Ah Ha! We haven't started blogging yet. I can still go this route. It will provide my students with the needed typing skills, responses to others' post, as well as create ideas for them to blog about. It will just be the ANTICI........PATION that may hinder their (and my) excitement for blogging.
So should I have started here before getting their excitement into creating their own blogs? Would you start with students commenting on your post or creating their own space adding to their own digital portfolio/footprint? Was this an uh oh or ah ha moment?