Teacher Resources
You need to decide what blogging service to use for your weblogs. This is a difficult call as there are many blogging software options available, and more being offered daily.
If you are new to blogging, I would suggest
starting with Blogmeister in the elementary school. It is a free blogging tool
for classrooms. The teacher sets up a blog acoount and then adds student
accounts which reside under the teachers. Student blogs can be public or
private. The teacher approves student posts or comments on posts. David Warlick created this service with teachers and students in mind. It is a most appreciated service!
More information about Blogmeister is available at David Warlick'sblog, Class Blogmeister.
See this link for step-by-step directions
for using BlogMeister.
I have not used Blogmeister myself. Blogmeister was not available when
I first started blogging with students. If it had been, I probably would have
started there. Read The Case for Classblogmeister by Mark Ahlness. He teaches third graders
in the Seattle Public Schools, and blogging is a big part of his class. You can
find links to his student blogs, also.
James Farmer offers Learnerblogs specifically for students in elementary, middle, and secondary schools. He also offers Uniblogs for University students, and Edublogs for educators. These are all free WordPress blogs. It would be a great place to start for your own professional blog. There are excellent tutorials on his edublog.org site. James Farmer is a Melbourne based education designer and social software consultant. His service is another most appreciated one by educators.
Aaron Campbell has two good reviews
of both Blogmeister and Learnerblogs in his article, Weblog Applications for
EFL/ESL Classroom Blogging: A Comparative Review.
I use Typepad for student blogs. I like Typepad. It is not free though. I purchased the educational pro service which lets me have unlimited number of weblogs. It is a little over $10 a month. It has a lot of features that let you custom design your blogs. You are the author on all of them so it takes management time but it gives you the control you need at the elementary school. It has a clean interface and they are always adding improvements. You can password protect sites, if needed. Here is a link to the Typepad site.
You can see my previous projects at My Weblogs Project Page on my professional blog, EduBlog Insights.