I like the suggestion to "start small." I'm developing sympathy for students who struggle to juggle all the work they have to do, and to produce quality work. I feel like I don't have very much that's interesting to say. I like the idea of starting with "posting homework and relevant class links" but I wonder how that would work with TeacherWeb, and if a Wiki page would be better.
Blog safety: Students don't use their real names...No problem. They'll be blogging in Spanish, so they can use their Spanish names.
There's a lot of technical info in this chapter. I'll have to come back to it as needed. I think I'll want to control students' posts before publication, so I should have them save their posts as a "draft" and then I can hit "publish" for them. How will that work with 80+ sixth graders to keep track of?
I checked out the Edublogs Awards site recommended on p.44. Found a blog...I think it's done by an ESL teacher, with reflections and links to videos he used with his classes. I'm not sure how to make URLs linkable (?) but I'll try: http://allatc.wordpress.com/ Pretty complex use of a blog. I can see it will take time for me to get more adept at this.
I am looking forwad to developing a wiki where I can post all of the handouts that I give out in class. I want to use a wiki to provide my students and parents with copies of class worksheets and monthly syllabi that can be accessed from home. I believe that a wiki will make it possible for me to avoid being the one responsible for recopying and providing multiple copies of each handout. I know there are many other possible uses for a wiki site, but like you I plan to start small.
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