Kidblog.org – The Teacher Guide

This website will let you create and manage a blog for your classroom. Here are some of the features.

• Create a class blog that students can safely post on
• Create and manage student accounts (no student email required)
• Making it safe. You control all the settings concerning posting and comments and who can view the blog
• Fun themes (so it looks nice)
• Very easy to use

As easy as any other service. Go to http://www.kidblog.org and click on Click to Create a Class. It will take you to a new page.

Fill out the form and click on the Create Class button. That’s it! You’ve signed up and created your first class. You can change the name of the class later if you want.

When you sign up, this is the first page you will see – your Control Panel. Don’t worry it is not as complicated as it might look. Let’s break each section down.

1. Blogging Activity – Here you can see how many posts are published or waiting to be published, pending or drafts there are on the blog. You can also see how much space you have left of your 500 mb.
2. Recent Comments – Here you can see and manage your most recent comments. You can see which comments are pending, if it has been approved. You can label it as Spam and you can even trash (delete) the comment.
3. Recent Posts – This shows you the most recent posts, the title of the post and who posted it
4. Menu Bar – Here you can do lots of things from create a new post, add users, change the theme of the blog and more. We will get into it a little later.

Adding students to the blog is very easy. First click on the Users button in your menu bar.

This is the page you will see. Simply click on Add New Users and it will take you to another page

Just add thier username and you create their password and the role. There are 5 different roles, from adminstrator to guest. To learn more about the roles go to this website:

http://kidblog.org/support/knowledgebase.php?article=13&suggest=1

By default, the role is set to student. A student can post and edit their posts only. They can read everyone’s posts tough and can only make comments approved by the teacher.

There is also an option to add multiple users using a CSV (spreadsheet) file.

When you add a student a little banner will pop up briefly to let you know that they have succcessfully been added to the blog.

After you click on All Users this is what you will see. Here you can see all the users and you can either Edit or Remove the student from the blog.

If you click Edit, you can change their password, change their display name or add an email and more. When you are done click on Update User and your changes will immediately take effect.

This is a handy feature that will let you reset a student’s password when they forget it.

Groups are like tags. It makes it easy for people viewing the blog to find posts that fall under a certain category. For example if you have three people working on a post, only one can post it (ovbviously).

By making a group that person can post it and let everyone reading the blog know that other people worked on it as well.

Here is how you set up a group.

You should still be under the User tab. Click on Manage Groups and a new window will appear.

Type the name of the group and click Create. The group will show up in the Group list on the right hand side of the page. Click on Add Members.

From here all you have to do is click on the green plus sign to add a person or the red X to remove them from the group. When you’re done click on Update and you’ve created a group.

The settings on the blog are very powerful. You can change the theme, change how students post and comment, even change who can see the blog itself! Click on Settings to get to the settings page.

This is the settings page. Here you can change the name of your blog, change the timezone, etc.

Let’s change how our students post. Click on the Posts tab.

Here you can see who is able to read the posts and who can post. By default it is set so only the people involved in the blog can read the blog. To allow parents to read click onAll visitors (no password required).

You can also see that you can enable that all posts must be approved before they appear on the blog. This is your decision and if you want to ensure the quality of the post, then it may be a good idea to have this checked.

Just be sure to click on Save Changes before you leave this page.

These settings are similar to the posts settings. You can say who can leave a comment. By default only the people associated with the blog can leave a comment.

Also by default the teacher must approve all comments before they appear on the blog. This is a good idea at first as some kids may find it funny to post a comment that is not relevant or appropriate.

Just be sure to click Save Changes button at the bottom.

Congratulations! You now have a blog for you and your students. It is a versatlie platform that can be used in a lot of different ways.

This guide is a good starting point but does not cover everything. Feel free to explore and discover everything http://www.kidblog.org has to offer you and your students. If you need more support please contact your handy dandy IT teacher.