So, certainly things have developed over the last few years in terms of blogging tools for educators. And it seems that more and more of the platforms are gearing themselves specifically to address the calls from teachers for varying levels of transparency, safety, etc. I remember way back in 2002 we chose to install Manila because it was one of the few to allow differing levels of public-ness (if that’s a word) even though at the time the process was pretty clunky. But today, that’s not the case any longer. And in the last couple of days I’ve seen some blurbs on some even more ed-centric options that are beginning to provide some real choices.
For instance, Edublogs has just announced a plugin that makes blogs private to all but registered and logged in Edublogs users. (Full disclosure: Edublogs hosts this blog in exchange for the ad at right.) And Bill Fitzgerald just announced that he’s released DrupalEd for free download. Add those to recent releases by 21Classes and even the new Blogger, David Warlick’s ClassBlogmeister, and even Vox, and all of a sudden, there’s much more to think about. (And btw, Manila is still around…)
So I’m wondering what teachers in the trenches are using right now. And I took literally 30 seconds to put up a new page at Support Blogging where we collectively might start to make a menu of the options. (I’m sure I’ve missed some.)
The good news is that we have some options out there to explore if we want to do that.
I’m using the Edublogs/Learnerblogs combo for school blogging. I like the WordPress engine and interface, and my students have found it pretty easy to use.
I think you should make more clear the distinction between hosted services and software run locally.
Thanks for this post. I did not know all the different options out there. I use 21classes.com, and I would have liked something else before I committed to them.
Regarding, “Full disclosure: Edublogs hosts this blog in exchange for the ad at right.”
is that something anyone can do? If so, could you point me to a link?
Thanks a bunch!!
I have used EduSpaces – http://eduspaces.net/ – formerly Elgg, for a number of classes as well as for my own blogging. It allows great privacy controls, and my students find it easy to use.
We recently started hosting our student blogs and wikis on our own server using Microsoft Sharepoint. So far so good.
I am a student at Shanghai American School in China. I use blogs to write things for my homework and I enjoy it. Please visit my blog at http://blogs.saschinaonline.org/hbeebe2014/
If you want to see where people visit your blog from around the world go to http://www.clustermaps.com!
Don’t forget about the all encompassing abilities of Moodle – as an outside service or for hosting yourself on your own server.
I still prefer edublogs and learnerblogs for bloging with students. I take it step further than most – all students must link to the ethics of blogging. I spend quite amount of time explaining this is not a MySpace, but a sight for online discussion of your writing. I have on line writing teams and each member is required to post a comment for assisting the writer imporve the article and a commentof the overall impact the article packs for the reader.