Good to know! Thanks!

Oh no! That’s really too bad, maybe Google decided they didn’t want to offer that functionality any more. I haven’t had to use it lately because we’ve started using Google Apps for Education so now all of our students have their own e-mail address. My suggestion would be to contact the parents and ask them for the use of a family e-mail address if your students are too young to have their own.

Oh boy. It sounds like you are in a tough situation. I don’t know if this would solve your problem, but what if you did an internal blog, something that is not accessible by anyone except your students (and their parents)? You could make everything password protected and then show your admin how much the students have grown through the experience. The only problem is that the real power in blogging (or any of these web 2.0 tools) is in the communication with others.

Another idea would be a password protected Ning. It’s not quite the same as a blog, but I’ve had success with schools as soon as I say it’s totally private and no one else can see it. In fact, a Ning has many more features than a blog, so you might even be able to do more than you think if you can get one started.

If neither of those work, I love the idea of having students comment on your website. That would be a nice simple way to start demonstrating the difference between one way communication and two way. If you did that, would it be public? Because then you could get other schools involved, and that would really be exciting!

If you still need more ideas, let me know! Good luck!

I want to blog with my 3rd graders so badly, but have been told in no uncertain terms that “right now we are not allowing blogging”. Since I live in a conservative area, I don’t anticipate that changing anytime soon. So…I’m wondering if you might have suggestions on alternatives? I’ve looked at zoho and wondered about the wiki there (I tried to have a wiki at Wikispaces last year but they blocked it with the above-referenced comment, which shows that they really don’t understand either concept!). I have been ‘allowed’ to have an outside website (on Weebly.com) and am wondering about the possibility of allowing comments from students?

Basically, I’m just trying to figure out if there is a safe way that I can introduce an activity that is similar-to-blogging-without-really-being-blogging so that I can then say – perhaps – Look what we’ve done, and we’re all alive and thriving, and it’s okay!

Any suggestions are welcome.

~c.

Personally, I’m not an iGoogle user, but I did just find this helpful blog post explaining how to share a tab in your iGoogle, so this might solve your problem.