Edu Spaces for Weblogs

A couple of new sites offering free Weblog and Wiki space for teachers have sprung up of late. Hopefully it’s the start of a bigger movement.

James Farmer has put up IncSub which is offering a whole slate of tools from WordPress to Drupal to Tiki and even phbbb for bulletin boards. I think this is a great offer and no doubt James would be happy to hear from teachers who are interested.

The other is a site I mentioned a couple of days ago, VisitMyClass. I met Jim Wenzloff at the Building Learning Communities conference earlier this year, and he’s taken it upon himself to offer this space to teachers and students in his area of Macomb County, Michigan. Also, he’s looking for some educators to provide feedback to students on their blogs:

I think one of the power of blogs is that it is a way for students to publish their work and to receive feedback on what they have written. The question is how do you attract visitors to your blog that will make appropriate comments? We don’t want to beat students into the ground on their first try.

I am proposing setting up a network of people who would be willing to comment on one or two pieces of student writing a month. The teacher would request feedback and give some guidelines to help the reader. The reader would look at one or more pieces of writing and make their comments. I am setting up a listserv for this purpose.