Which Software?

Clarence Fisher over at Remote Access is gearing up for his new year and pushing himself to pursue new goals, one of which involves getting started with student blogging right from the start of the year. I was interest to see he is in the process of deciding whether to use Blogger, Blogmeister or Edublogs.org; I am trying to make that very decision. I finally was able to turn on my classroom computer, a Mac cube. I discovered it is running OS 9.2. I’m hoping that alone doesn’t limit my choices. I am eager to read what Clarence chooses.

As far as I can tell, no one was blogging with students at the elementary level in my district last year, so there is no precedent for me to follow. I want to do this right so that blogging can flourish and enrich the curriculum. My fear is that I won’t present it well enough, or parents will be too worried or a bad comment will cause the district to possibly ban all blogging. Not sure I feel worthy of this charge.

As mentioned before, I plan to start with a class blog, but I don’t know if I get to start it day one. I discovered all the classrooms have a T.V. with a VCR and a DVD player attached to the wall. The classroom computer has the driver to run a device that should let me connect the Mac to the TV, which would be great for getting the class blog started. I’ve added questions about that to the long list of questions I have for our school media specialist when I meet her.

I tried to contact Ms. Sanborn, a grade 5 teacher at Willowdale Elementary because she has just the type of blog I am hoping to create. Unfortunately, the email address on her site did not work. Just as at the start of this very blog, I feel in the need of mentors.

I hope that later in the year, students will have their own blogs. I am chaffing at the bit to start them, but I am too new to this curriculum and this team to dive in with that right off the bat. As mentioned above, I need to do this right.