Since I started blogging with my students I have used KidBlog and I must say this product gets better and better! It is hard to believe that it is free at times, go Kidblog! So recently they unveiled a whole slew of updates and changes to the otherwise static website and I must say I am impresed and my students are very, very excited. here are some of our favorite new features:
- The visitor stats! Yeah!!! We can finally see how many people are visiting and where they are coming from. This little feature truly enlightened my students just how many people read their writing and helped them elevate their blogging.
- The new themes. We are not here to look pretty but it sure is nice that there are more options as we try to draw visitors to our blog.
- The student control. Each student can now choose their own theme, as well as create their own title for their blog. This gives them bigger ownership and helps them showcase themselves to the world. I love that they can truly set up their own blog while still being “protected” by me.
- The tagging. What a great way to have students be organized as well as keeping track of who is doing what Now that we can tag posts I can quickly see who is blogging about what and whether we tend to focus on one area more than another.
- Blog roll! Under the new widgets you can add other classes that will show up right on our blog for my students to connect with. No more trying to get them to type in the right address, just click on the name and go to the site. fantastic for us as we try to connect with as many classrooms as possible and boraden our horizons.
And so much more, these are just my favorite of the new things you can do. If you ever need any help setting up your Kidblog please feel free to contact me.
Pernille Ripp 
All of these improvements are really welcome for student blogs. I know that the visitor count was something that many people had requested. I know that my students always looked at their visitor information when they logged on. The power of a world wide audience can't be understated.
Since the map when up my kids can "see" how far their words go. That combined with the tagging has been transformative for engagement. We did some Storm Sandy posts and there is at least one person in Jakarta reading our posts.One of the hardest things in writing instruction is to get students to have a sense of audience, the map does it in a second. amazing.
I would like to start blogging and using quad blogs. Do the other classes link to your page? how can parents or grandparents post comments? I have lots of questions as we begin blogging at our school in California. Mrs. K
Hi Mrs. K,Feel free to email me as well with any of these questions! Very briefly, yes, other classes can link to you on their blog roll or you can link to them. makes it very easy for kids to connect rather than having to type in addresses. To open it up to others you have to go under settings for both comments and posts and open it up to anybody. I then keep myself on as moderator as well so that nothing "bad" gets posted (mostly spam…).I hope this helps.Best,Pernille
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