Educational Technology Blogs-Kidblog/Wallwisher

It was a coincidence that this week we are learning about blogging. Through an educational technology blog I subscribe to, I discovered a kid-friendly blogging web 2.0 tool, Kidblog. Kidblog is a friendly kid-blogging tool that any teacher can easily set up for their students to get the blogging started. Another great thing about this tool is that it is free! Kidblog is a great site for any student to use because as we all learned this week, blogging can get students engaged and writing at any grade-level.  Not only is this a great tool to use, but many times certain websites are blocked in districts. Blogger.com for example is a site that is blocked at my district so this would not necessarily be a great tool to use at my elementary school. This video I provided from Youtube explains how to get started using Kidblog. Enjoy!

Another tool I found from my blog subscriptions is Wallwisher. Wallwisher is simply a tool that allows students to "post" like a post-it onto an interactive wall online. Wallwisher starts off with letting the teacher pick a background for the wall and allowing you to pose a question or reflection. Once students have access to the link of the wall you have created, students can then comment on the wall. I feel that this is a good way to start off getting the students commenting and writing. Blogging at first may be difficult for students, but Wallwisher is a great beginning tool to eventually lead the students to blogging and commenting. What is neat about this tool is that it can be set up where the teacher/creator of the wall can set up the comments where they need to be approved before being posted for everyone to see. I have already used this tool in my classroom this year and I have found it really gets my students engaged. It is a quick way to have students commenting and reflecting.