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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 5, 2008 at 4:03pm

I bumped into this book review blog written by a kid, it has a nice, clean look. It would be a no brainer to set one up like it. If students titled their discussion the name of the book and included the name of the book in the tags there would be a list of the books in one of the margins of the blog.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Ritter on August 5, 2008 at 4:47pm

Thank you, Nancy! This is precisely what I was looking for! Now how do I create this for our middle school. Just now I do not wish to join the book review blog you sent. I would like my kids to feel comfortable just connecting with kids within our school before opening the blog up to others. Eventually, I want to do the latter; just not now. Thank you again! Sarah

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 5, 2008 at 5:25pm

Go to blogger.com and set up an account, I don't have blogger blogs with multiple authors but I'm sure it is easy to set up. Let me know if I can help you. Other people in this forum rave about other student blogs but I've been happy using blogger for my personal blogs (and that is what the student reviewer used).

You might consider starting small with maybe 10 reliable writers. If you start with 40-50 kids you all will be overwhelmed. You can see my students' blog HERE and my blogger blogs HERE and HERE.

I'm planning on starting the book review blog for my students this year, also.

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on August 6, 2008 at 11:22am

To make sure it appeals to students, have some students help you design it. Especially if you use blogger, there are plenty of options and choices they can play with, and you get the added benefit of extra helpers who can teach other students and help you maintain things.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Ritter on August 6, 2008 at 7:41pm

Thanks, Sylvia. I need to be reminded to get the kids involved. My habit of doing it all myself is just that, a habit. It is not the way I want to be! I use edublog because it is free and has most of what I need. Thanks again for reminding me of what I know is right. Sarah

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on August 6, 2008 at 12:40pm

Blogs would be pretty well suited for this. You could use tags as a means of categorizing the book. They would be great because they are so flexible (ie: fiction, fantasy, harry potter, j k rowling, witchcraft, series, intermediate). Setting up a tag cloud would be great too!

If you use WordPress, you could add a ratings plugin so that you have the cool star ratings like you see on Amazon. It would be even cooler if people making comments on a b review could also give ratings.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Ritter on August 6, 2008 at 7:39pm

I love all of your ideas, so how do I do them all? I will check out WordPress and tag cloud to understand them better and be back! Thank you, Steve.

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on August 7, 2008 at 5:06am

Tags are part of the default WordPress installation (and I'm sure that is so with any blog platform. The Tag Cloud is a widget that is also part of the default package, you just need to activate it. If you need further assistance, let me know.

The ratings would have to be uploaded as a plugin. I'm not sure how edublog, which runs on wordpress, handles plugins, but I know they offer an assortment. I guess you could ask them.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Ritter on August 10, 2008 at 5:49pm

Thank you, Steve. Unfortunately, I cannot follow quite what you are saying as my learning curve is waaaaay behind yours. Sarah

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Permalink Reply by Vee Paisie on August 10, 2008 at 6:01pm

Sarah, I'm right with you. Thank you for starting this discussion because it is precisely what I want to start with my students. I run a Writers' Guild after school and started a wiki for those 15 or so kids. They took to it like the proverbial water-seeking ducks and many started their own wikis where they'd write and comment. I want to do the same thing with books for my classes. And I, too, need to remember to let the kids do what work they can!

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on August 11, 2008 at 10:13am

There is a danger here if the teacher does not understand what the students are doing when they set up a resource on the Internet. It is up to the adult to understand the software and how to configure it securely. I've seen too many examples of teachers into a web project over their heads having students set things up for them.

I do agree with the idea of giving students more ownership. The adult just needs to be able to monitor and check.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 11, 2008 at 2:55pm

WET BLANKET ALERT! I agree with what you say, Steve, about teacher knowing what is going on, it can save a lot of headaches; but I have another reason for setting things up in advance---most kids (K-8) have no taste, no design skills, and produce some downright ugly stuff!! Left to the kids each website, wiki, blog or Moodle would be bright pink and green with pirated clipart photos of the Jonas Brothers and Chris Brown!! lol

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