DD creates her first Blog Post

Yesterday I talked about some of the digital tools kids can use these days.  Part of the reason I wanted to write that post was because it was an area my kids haven’t delved much into. The majority of our projects have been hands-on or have been lapbooks or notebooking pages.    I learned a lot looking into the ways technology can be used to supplement tradtional type work.  I feel a lot more comfortable knowing some of the tools I can introduce the kids to.

A couple of weeks ago I created an account on Kidblog so that the kids could create their own blog posts online.  As I mentioned yesterday, according to their terms of service, kids under the age of 13 are not supposed to use platforms such as blogger or word press. That is in order to comply with COPPA: the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

I chose Kidblog becaues it has the look and feel of blogger and is set up specifically for kids and teachers.  I created sections for both LD and DD to create and publish their own work. Here’s a look at the basic platform:

DD wanted to do a blog post on raccoons. I took her through some of the basic steps in creating a post. First she read up on raccoons.

Then she went out and looked for some images and learned how to save the file to our computer in her own file. She learned to resize the image and upload them into her blog post. She even combined a couple of pictures using picassa.

Then once she was done adding in pictures and writing her captions (she did everything herself), it was time to publish her work (obviously I can’t show you too much of that without pasting in endless pictures, but here’s a screenshot of the first bits…):

For the life of me I can’t seem to get the voki avatar (pictured in the screenshot above)  to work here in wordpress. I think if you click on this link and hit play you can see her little avatar (she recorded the little message herself).

If your kids are home for the summer it might be a fun project for them to delve into–creating their own online summer diary or doing research and creating posts about things that interest them.

4 Responses

  1. My kids are enjoying having their own blogs too. It has been a wonderful writing outlet. Nice job DD!! Thank you for sharing.

  2. My kids are enjoying having their own blogs too. It has been a wonderful writing outlet. Nice job DD!! Thank you for sharing.

  3. Marisol says:

    I think it is a great idea to teach your kids about writing and blogging. I worry about any person being able to find these blogs and misusing the information. http://www.Sgouples.com allows users to create truly private groups. You control who access the group. A children’s blogger group would be a great use of this tool. Children can learn about and from each other while parents know their writing are safe from the view of predators.

  4. Marisol says:

    I think it is a great idea to teach your kids about writing and blogging. I worry about any person being able to find these blogs and misusing the information. http://www.Sgouples.com allows users to create truly private groups. You control who access the group. A children’s blogger group would be a great use of this tool. Children can learn about and from each other while parents know their writing are safe from the view of predators.

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