So, over the last several weeks I’ve been relieved at how well I’ve assimilated my various online presences. When I boot up, I check my email (West, Yahoo, and Gmail), cruise Google Reader, and see what’s up on the Dobbs wiki from time to time, then get going with whatever I need to do. Shortly after enjoying the placid waters of stasis, I threw a big rock in the pond and I’m looking for advice.
I’m started private blogs with my Spanish 1 kids this week. We will use this as a forum for out-of-class discussions pertaining to the material that we are studying. Spanish 1 students focus on the creation of simple, meaningful sentences that model a particular structure introduced by the teacher. Then the student, at his or her own comfort level, experiments with that structure by adding new vocabulary, or adding elements like phrases and clauses. All this to say, the kids will not be discussing the 20/20 Initiative. They’ll be talking about what they like to eat and drink. All of this is preparation for Spanish 2 when they make their blogs public and begin to dialogue with the outside world.
The JH uses WordPress for their student blogs. So, I’ve added another step in my digital routine. I have 28 kids with WordPress blogs, and I welcome your advice in making this an easier undertaking.
The blogs are private and can only be viewed by invitees. I had students assign me the role of administrator on their blogs, and for the time being, their comments must be approved by me (after a while I’ll loosen the reins).
Here’s my question. Is there an easier way to monitor their blogs? I think that Edublogs is a WordPress product. Is it possible to tie my Edublogs and WordPress accounts together, so my daily routine does not involve one more website, username, GUI, etc.?
Any advice appreciated.
¡Inglés fatal! 
Hi! You are correct that Edublogs is WordPress. I have my class blog on Edublogs, but I don’t know how you can transfer from Wordprss to Edublogs now that you have already created a blog. Why not create a blog on Edublogs and forget about the one that you just created on WordPress? Or, perhaps you could ask their help dept. on advice. I have all of my students write on the one blog and I have separate pages for each class period instead of having a different blog site for each class. I find it very easy to check comments and postings that way.
I hope this helps. Nina
Hi Ted,
Yes Edublogs is built on a Word Press platform, so they do “talk to each other.” However, they are still two different “spaces” and they don’t offer an admin tool to straddle the two administratively.
The only thing you can do with the blogs is as a reader you can RSS them (both posts and comments).
Now, if you would like to move your Edublog blog (this one) over to your school’s Word Press server, now that is something I can help with. You can export the Edublogs blog and then import it into a Word Press blog on your server. I’ll gladly walk you through it. Just make sure you let us know the new URL so we can change our RSS feeds to keep up with you!
Laura
I really like having everything in one place. I don’t think I would check my reader so frequently if it weren’t one click away from my e-mail. Also, I have everything but my work e-mail forwarded to my gmail account, so all of my e-mail comes to one inbox. I am sometimes frustrated that all of the websites and databases that we use for work are not all in one place. The result is too many usernames and passwords to keep up with.
Does the fact that your students’ blogs are private prevent you from following them using an RSS feed? I would guess that this might be the case but do not know for sure.