Have you been thinking about starting a classroom blog, but you aren't sure where to start? I would love to give you some tips from my own class blog experience and start you on your blogging journey!
Step by Step:
1. Pick your host site. Blogger and Wordpress are the most popular. My class blog is hosted by Wordpress. The dashboards are similar. Con: Wordpress is less user friendly. Pro: The app for Wordpress is WAY better than the Blogger app. I downloaded the Blogger app to use on this blog and have had some issues. (if anyone has any tips for me about the Blogger app...let me know!) I love the Wordpress app because I can easily take photos on my phone and then post them very quickly to my class blog.
2. Set up your account (both Blogger and Wordpress are free). I used my school email for my classroom blog. After you confirm with your email, you can start setting up. You will be prompted to pick a theme (mine is Twenty Ten, but pick what you like). Go to your dashboard. On Wordpress, you go to the title of your blog in the upper left corner, then choose dashboard from the drop down menu. This is where you will do all of your customizing and adding of content.
3. I started by adding static pages to my blog so I can send it to parents before school even starts to give them an overview of our class and routines. It is also a great reference if they forget a homework routine, they can go to the site and read about it. If you are a visual person (like me!) and you want to see what I have done on my class blog you can click this link: http://mrslomaxsclass.wordpress.com/ The pages I chose are: About Mrs. Lomax, Curriculum, Favorite Websites, Homework, and New Posts. To add a page to yours click on pages on the left hand side and then click add new.
4. Title your page and add the content, publish and...voila! Classroom blog, check!
5. Adding a sub page. If you want to add a sub page (like on mine where I have curriculum, if you go to that I have 4 sub pages--math, reading, writing, and science) go to pages and click add new. Title the page (Science) add content like you are adding it to a normal page, then on the right hand side where it says "Page attributes" go to where it says "no parent" click on the drop down arrow and choose a parent page (for my science page, curriculum is my parent page).
Once you get your page set up then you are ready to start posting. At the beginning of the year I sent the link to my parents and I asked them to sign up to follow me so that they will receive updates every time I post.
Start thinking about how you could make this work for you (post newsletters, pictures, updates, schedules, etc.)
I know this is a long post, but one more thing. I believe in sharing with other teachers as much as possible--we all work SO hard! If you see something you like on my classroom blog, feel free to use it on yours, I promise, I don't mind! I am looking forward to seeing your classroom blogs! I think you are probably on information overload, so I'll stop here for now, but more tips and tricks to come in the following weeks.
Happy Blogging!
Mandy L.
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