Designing your blog is point-and-click (using words, pictures, video or sound) and you can be up and running in minutes. You can update your blog as often as you wish, keeping it fresh and attractive for regular visitors. Importantly, you can show links to other material, such as other blogs or web sites with relevant, additional, information. If you’d still like to keep your thoughts private or by invitation only, you can protect it with a password. But because most blogs are public, you might be surprised how many people read and comment on your views and thoughts.  So why should you want to blog?

As a teacher, you might find that you benefit from keeping a journal of your experiences in the classroom or as a place for storing those late night flashes of genius or notes from an inspiring course.  And, because your readers can leave comments, they may add some insight to yours. A big part of blogging is about sharing. But do be aware that some people that leave comments can be less-than-kind. More on commenting later…

Some schools have already investigated the potential of blogs in the classroom. At its simplest, a blog can be an online portfolio of children’s work containing text, scanned images, sound, photographs and even video. There is also the opportunity to be more inventive and use a blog as the basis of a class topic or investigation. Sandhaig Primary School, for instance, not only includes a number of online galleries in its blog but is an excellent example of a school regularly updating its blog. There are book reviews, journal entries for school events and trips, and even examples of Flash movies they have created. You can visit it (and comment) at http://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/

There’s a huge potential audience for your blog and, because your blog site can show how many ‘hits’ or visits there have been, children will love the fact that they’ve had so many readers. From this, other benefits develop too. The audience is potentially so large, real and live that writing for blogs takes an additional responsibility. Combining text and images can help to organise ideas more carefully and pupil confidence, not just with ICT, can increase. You might even find that blogging encourages greater accuracy, care and motivation. Blogging provides a great opportunity to give children a voice.

OK, let’s talk about getting your first school or class Blog set up and on the web.

‘Text from article in the July 2007 issue of Junior Education magazine’