This week I met with Cory Antonini a consultant on our school team to discuss connecting my classroom. I wanted to make sure I had a clear understanding of what the polices were for Regina Public School regarding individual students blogs and the use of twitter. I described to Cory the experiences that I had last week when I tried to have my classroom connect and comment on other classroom blogs. Cory and I viewed my current classroom blog and created a classroom Twitter account. When we tried to add a Twitter feed to my current blog we were unable to. After some discussion about wanting to eventually add individual student blogs and have a variety of security options available I decided to use Blogger because it is linked to the Regina Public Schools Google account. Cory also showed my the Kidblog website and suggested that I explore it for when I want to add individual student blogs. I want to find a tool that is easy for young children to use and is easy to manage. Cory encouraged me to continue teaching my children how to comment on other classroom blogs. He also suggested that we start creating content as a classroom through shared writing experiences and posting them on Twitter and our class blog. Learning another blog format is a bit of a challenge but experience is the best teacher! If you are using Blogger or Kidblog I would love to hear about your experiences.
I am currently in the process of creating content for the new classroom blog. I was excited to be able to add a translate function to the blog. I teach a large number of children who are new to Canada and English is an additional language in their homes. I hope that this tool allows families to receive information from the school in the language that they are the most comfortable.
Another step forward that our school took this week was to have a technician come to our school to set up our iPads. We now have a way to add apps to our iPads and have ordered cases to keep them safe. I welcome any app suggestions that you might have.
Beyond the Glass 
Jackie – if you’re interested in digital storytelling at all, you should check out the Puppet Pals iPad app – with the director’s cut version, students can actually create their own puppets out of pictures or things they draw and then use their puppets to tell stories!
Thanks Katia. I bought the all access app of PuppetPals. I am excited to give it a try.
Hi, Jackie! Yes to Puppet Pals! Super fun and kids love it (especially when you get the all access version, good work). Sounds like you are really getting rolling here- exciting! We have a couple sets of iPads at MacKenzie now and we are trying to learn how best to manage and organize the iPads…who can add and remove apps, how to organize them for the different grade levels and needs in the school, connecting to a printer, etc. It is an exciting new phase!
I think you will really enjoy the learning that happens via student blogging. I use EduBlogs and quite like it, though I use Blogger for my classroom blog and it has always been excellent. I am going to try get started with a classroom Twitter account, as well. I think I’ll just do one account and then we’ll write our tweets together or I will feature one student’s tweet on a given day. Great for summarizing and “finding the main idea!”
Good work! I’m excited for you, and for your kids!!
Thanks Harmony. It is very exciting!
Jackie
It looks like you have taken the right steps with meeting with a school consultant to decide how to move forward with using twitter and blogs in your classroom. It is great that you are taking the necessary steps to implement your idea in your classroom. In a wat it makes me want to teach in the K-12 system. Maybe in my next life. Thanks for sharing the kidsblog site. I was not aware of this. Good luck.
Thanks Greg. We are always looking for volunteers if you have some time and want to spend it with some wonderful children.
Hi Jackie, thanks for sharing your process in using the classroom blogs. It’s also a great way of connecting school with parents. Besides, I think the translation fuction you’ve added to your classroom blog would really help to build the connections with EAL children’s familities. Great idea!
Thanks. Blogger made adding the translation function very easy.
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