Safety First

Safety considerations are a must when children are publishing to the Internet. Here's a list of things to consider when creating a blog for classroom use.
The following is paraphrased from Will Richardson's "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms", which I highly recommend as a resource if you're just getting started with educational blogging. It's one-stop-shopping!

• The basics

Students should never publish personal information that might identify them to predators: phone number, instant message identifier, home address, e-mail address.

• What's in a name?

The level of security you choose as the administrator of the blog is up to you and the comfort level of your parents, school and community. Students need to feel they're represented as the owner of their published work. Ideally, a blog can be password-protected so that students can blog under their real name. How you set up your blog should be balanced with security concerns. If you don't password protect your blog so as to increase access, the highest level of anonymity can be achieved by assigning each student-blogger a number, or having each student choose an alias. It is also acceptable to have your students use first name only, which I recommend primary grades for primary grades. Middle and High schoolers can use their first names for sure, and you can consider using full names. When doing so, be sure to engage in an ongoing conversation about Internet safety while searching, reading and publishing.

• Blogging letter

Send home a letter to parents that states your plans blog use in your curriculum and clearly outlines how students will be using the blog and the security procedures you've put in place. Most importantly, introduce them to the blog by posting the same letter on your blog and giving them the web address. It's best if you show them, rather than tell them, and perhaps some of your enthusiasm will rub off! Here's a link to a wiki on blogging put out by Bud the Teacher, which provides several sample blogging letters for parents.

• Blogging agreement

For the middle and high school students it is a good idea to write up a 'blogging agreement' with your students. This document outlines blogging etiquette and your expectations for the class as you enter an online community. You can even write them as a class! For primary grades, I suggest you always have your students write down their blog entry on a piece of paper before going to the computer to type it in. Again, Bud comes to the rescue and has an entry on Blogging Rules his class developed.