A guide to creating blogs for use in a school department/faculty, with classes and to showcase and develop your own teaching resources.

1. Jenny Turner - @msmfl - msmfl.wordpress.com Blogging 101
BLAGGING BLOGGING
How to make and
curate blogs for
use in MFL
lessons
IF YOU CAN SEND AN EMAIL,
YOU CAN BLOG!
Amongst the many free blogging sites, posterous.com is probably
the most suitable for school use as it allows unlimited sub-blogs,
each of which can be password protected with a different
password, thereby ensuring a level of online security suitable for
school.
(It’s also dead simple to use and looks pretty too!)
Easy Start Guide:
Blogs are great. They really The main types of blogs
are. And they’re free, easy and considered here are: 1. www.posterous.com
2. Create username, name of blog
student-proof (most of the and a password (for your use)
time. This guide will show you 1. Department/Faculty 3. Posterous Spaces > Space
Settings > Privacy > Edit >
how to make the best of blogs (open access to all Password protect
blogging to enhance your and sundry) 4. Look and Feel > Edit Theme
teaching and quite probably
Ready to go!
also the profile of your
2. Class blogs (password
department/faculty. All you will Post to your blog by sending an
protected to allow access email from your registered email
need to do is to keep up with address to:
to certain classes/groups/
the posting to ensure the nameofblog@posterous.com
content is up-to-date, relevant clubs only)
Attach files (images, pdfs, word,
and interesting to make audio, video etc) onto your email
students, parents, other 3. Personal teacher blogs and they automatically appear on
your post.
teachers and your millions of (putting yourself out into
worldwide fans keep on cyberspace!) Autopost to Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube and many others to create
coming back for more. an instant online social presence.
Best Posterous/school blogging links -
★ Joe Dale: http://tinyurl.com/joedale-posterous
★ Setting up a moderated class blog with
Posterous: http://tinyurl.com/brr58bn
★ Primary Pete: http://tinyurl.com/cvzts4m
★ Richard Byrne: http://tinyurl.com/cvzts4m
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2. Making a Departmental / Faculty Blog
FACULTY BLOGGING Static webpages are fairly cumbersome to update, which is why a departmental
blogsite which can be updated instantly and by email and by several people at any time
is likely to be a more interesting option for departments/faculties.
You could include up-to-date news on events in the faculty, trips, photos of
lessons, activities or projects, videos of recent things going on, lots and lots of lovely
links, course resources, letters home, revision literature...the list is endless.
Ideally, a Faculty blog should be open access so that anyone can view it, so you
would need to take into account child protection issues, such as not naming children or
PDFs, Word docs, publishing work from students without specific permission from parents, but you
PPTs...pretty any
should be guided by your school’s e-safety / child protection policy.
type of file shows
up in full and can Separate pages can be created which could include contact details for staff
easily be members, course/exam board information, trip information, project information,
downloaded or
calendars and so on
printed out.
Only the main blog page is the one which is updated through normal blogging: any
other page remains static and has to be updated through the posterous website, but
you can add documents and photos etc to be shown on those pages too.
Make sure that there is a link to the Faculty blog from the main school website
and/or main MFL page on the school website and publicise the blogsite to students
and parents.
If you are feeling brave and your e-safety etc policies allow, you could also create a
Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page (no need to befriend students!) a Flickr
(photosharing) site and a YouTube site for your Faculty. If you set the posterous to
autopost to each of these, then each time you post onto the blog, it will automatically
Create a calendar update the others, therefore students (and parents) who are are more likely to be on
page by embedding Facebook than anything else will get instant updates into their feeds of what is going
a Google calendar
on in the department.
with important
Faculty and school
dates into a Main things to consider:
separate Calendar ★staff to be contributors
page.
★open access
★autopost to other social networking sites
★check your e-safety policy (or write one yourself!)
★check permissions from parents
★get yourself linked to other MFL blogs
★list of useful links
★clear and easy to read theme - ensure it is accessible to all.
Just one example of a Dept blog….(still a work in progress!)
Create links to
other sites of use
to your readers
and other blog
sites. Interlink
the blogs in this
way so there is no
excuse for
students not being
able to find the
blog(s)!
http://stowmarketmfl.posterous.com
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3. Class blogging
CLASS BLOGGING
This is perhaps the most exciting (and 1. Copy the html/embed code
troublesome!) part of blogging at school: getting the
students involved. They can develop their ICT and
online awareness through posting to the private blog
and sharing and communicating with each other
through it.
You can create an unlimited number of sub-
blogs linked to your same email account for classes,
groups or clubs. These should ideally be password -
protected to enable a degree of online security for the
students and their work. 2. Create a post on your blog
I learned fast to provide a slip/sticker to on the webpage, click the small
students with the blog address, their email address blue HTML square and paste the
and the blog password which they could then put into code into the box. Go back to Add students in a class
their planners/exercise books. the ‘normal’ post. using their school email
Keyword tags are very helpful in organising a address as ‘contributors’
large number of posts (see the sidebar for examples) and ensure they get daily
and when students post, they should include tags in
email updates, otherwise
their email. In the subject line after the blog title,
they will be inundated
simply type: ((tag1; tag2)) e.g. ((resources; grammar))
with emails. .
and posterous should do the rest. Watch out for the
double brackets and the semi colon. You need not
limited yourself to just two tags, as long as you use a
semi-colon after each!
Embedding code from other online providers
3. The code becomes a game
can prove to be very worthwhile. Most online tools
which can be played directly
have an embed code which is usually found under through the blog page!
‘share’ options. There are zillions of web games,
tools, functions and gizmos which have an embed
code. Copy and paste the code into the HTML part of
the web posting interface. The content will work
directly from the final post, so it’s great for games.
Try embedding a game from www.zondle.net Train students to tag
into your class blog: it also keeps track of class their work with their
scores for you and emails you at the end of a names, and make sure you
specified time period a leaderboard! You will need to tags your posts with
sign up for it first - it’s free. keywords. This makes
hunting for homework and
Setting posts about specific
homework and topics much easier!
embedding
content
Mark and provide feedback
online - but don’t forget
that it will be visible
to all who has access to
the blog.
Encourage students to
collaborate and feedback
to each other by using
the blog comment
functions. They should be
logged in (with their
registered email address)
to do this so that no
comments are anonymous.
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4. msmfl.wordpress.com
OK, so I’m cheating a bit by
not using posterous, but
wordpress is a lot more
versatile for my own
blogsite as it allows me to
add widgets and gizmos to my
blog much more easily than
posterous.
Your own teaching blog:
ideas, resources, links,
thoughts, projects,
connections…..
1.On trips, projects, days out etc, get students to email photos/text
What next? from their phones to the blog to provide a running commentary of
events.
2. Blog with primary schools to help improve transition and give an
So you have your Faculty blogging and your classes
idea of what MFL teaching at big school is like. Older students could
blogging. You may even have convinced other colleagues in other
blog videos teaching younger ones some language.
faculties to blog as well. You might be blogging with schools and
3. Create project blogs. We have separate ones for Languages
classes around the world, or you might be blogging about trips Challenge and Languages Leaders Award programmes.
and projects with parents. What’s left? You! By making a blog, 4.Create speaking/video diaries: students record/film themselves on
linking with other teachers on twitter (#mfltwitterati) and sharing their mobiles and blog the audio /video files on a regular basis as
your ideas, resources and projects, you will find so much to enrich homework to track speaking progress.
your own teaching. 5.Your MFLAs could put together a series on online resources about
Yo may prefer to use other blog providers for your own their region, together with audio/video of them speaking.
6. Revision / lesson resources - simply attach the relevant files to
personal blog: I found that the gizmos that I wanted on my blog
your email. Great if you can train the students to access the blog if they
were very fiddly to get into posterous. It’s possible, but they need
are absent from your lesson and saves a lot of running around with
an advanced knowledge of HTML programming and this is quite
photocopied sheets.
time consuming if, like me, you had to start from the beginning!
7. Create a free embeddable forum for FAQs, discussions and
Suggested providers with no preference intended or specified parental contact with www.nabble.com. Also, get instant student/
are: parental responses to letters etc by embedding Google Forms or
★ edublogs.com another survey tool into a blog post.
★ wordpress.com 8. Collaborate with another class in another country on the same
★ blogger.com project - work together and communicate through the blog.
★ tumblr.com
10 ideas to kick 9. Film and music reviews - together with a link to the film, trailer,
start your blog clips, music and online research.
★ typepad.com
10. Create QR codes which link to your blog posts; put posters of the
QR code square (and no other info) around school and watch the interest
they generate.
BEST OF CLASS BLOGGING: QUADBLOGGING.NET VOKI.COM IPADIO.COM YOUTUBE.COM
Sign your blog up Create an avatar Register for free Paste a youtube
to be ‘twinned’ and make it speak and download an link into your
with three other with your voice or app to record email or web post
school blogs: with it’s audio. You can set and posterous will
share experiences, automatic voices! files to automatically
comment on each Embed the code automatically convert it to play
other’s work, into your post. upload or you can on your blog.
learn about the Great for a bit of embed them. Great Great for sharing
world... We are fun and for instant class work with
twinned with creativity. sharing of audio parents!
Manchester, Students can made in the
Virginia (USA) and comment and classroom and for
Bangkok, Thailand. feedback on each listening exercise
It need not be MFL other. homework.
related.
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