Keeping a school blog ‘on topic’
Staff and students may already be using social networking tools or blogs to keep up to date with friends in their private life. These have a different purpose and intent from a classroom blog.
Teachers may need to help students understand this difference and provide ongoing guidance to help students separate out personal issues that are not related to school topics.
It is also important to help children understand the long term impact of the digital foot print they create through blog posts and online activity.
Students considering their digital footprint is part of digital citizenship. Class blogs need to have a set of agreed protocols which determine how they are to be used. The protocols need to be drawn up by both the students and the teacher and need to reflect societal values and sound ethical behaviour.
The teacher does have a responsibility to monitor class blogs, but I think so do the students, because expecting a teacher to read every students’ post is unreasonable. Teachers should deal with breaches of the protocols, and students should report breaches they have come across to the teacher for follow up.
Web 2.0 tools require all participants to be responsible because it is definitely about community