This is one of the best professional development tools available. Teachers can quickly get set up and be online in a matter of minutes. We can then spend time on the important stuff like communication and collaboration. Thank you for providing such a useful tool!
Edublogs is a tremendous resource for the worldwide community of educators. I work as an assistive technology consultant in K-12 schools on Vancouver Island. I’ve used edublogs since May of 2006 to highlight free educational software and online resources.
The flexible and versatile edublogs platform has served me very well. Useful new features are added regularly, so edublogs is continuously evolving and improving. And edublogs really does get around. In the first six months after installing Google Analytics, my blog had visits from over 100 countries!
I’ve been using Edublogs for over a year now, so I have a very long list of all the reasons I love this program. To avoid rambling on, I’m going to confine my testimonial to observations and reflections from a workshop I did with eleven teachers this past week.
After sharing with them how I was using blogging in my teaching practice, I suggested venturing into Edublogs so they could set up their own blogs. On Day 1 they were pretty hesitant about incorporating blogs into their teaching toolkit. By Day 3 they were totally on board. By Day 5, many were teaching me new Edublogs tricks and tips (i.e., sidebar widget stuff).
They loved and very much appreciated that Edublogs is a community of educators. They loved the ease of setting up a blog. They loved the new themes, widgets and customizable headings especially.
But what really pulled them over the top was the Forum. When several had questions I couldn’t answer, I took them into the Forum (see posts from Lot49 and McCann). Wish I had tapped their responses the next day when they logged in and saw that you and others had already responded. 24/7 support – Wow!
Oh my, oh my, what a wonderful community and world of possibilities.
Gail Desler, Blogwalker
Elk Grove Unified School District (Sacramento, California)
Area 3 Writing Project (UC Davis – California)
I love Edublogs and I find the network to be very supportive and flexible. The Wordpress platform is very easy to use (easier than Manila, which I had been using) and James is always checking out the forums (do you sleep, James?) and answering questions, fixing problems and working on solutions.
I use Edublogs as a teacher, as a writer, as a professional development leader and as a member of the blogging community. And now I am also using Edublogs Premium for our Western Massachusetts Writing Project and we are very pleased with the service and ability to administer our own network for our teachers and program leaders.
Kevin H
Western Massachusetts
USA
Edublogs has revolutionised the way I share ideas and resources with other teachers around the world.
It has motivated me to write about my experiences as a teacher and thus improve the quality of my teaching.
I’ve set up a separate blog called notreblog for children to share their ideas as moderated comments. So far students in the UK, USA and France have given their opinions on global issues and described what they do in their everyday life.
Edublogs has helped to give all my students an equal voice. It has also helped them to learn how much they have in common with other children around the world.
Alex Savage
ICT teacher at Notre Dame High School, Norwich, UK
My blogs have enabled me to meet my students’ learning where it happens for them – on line and interactive.
As an educator, I like that it is a live document; I can add and delete links for their reading as I locate better ones. I can update images as I search the web.
Even better, I save on photocopying (cost and trees) and no more ‘I lost my notes..” as it’s all online!
Mrsbester
I’m a Grade 5 teacher near Ottawa, Canada. I’ve used Edublogs this past year to set up both a classroom blog and podcast. My students are 10 and 11 years old.
There wasn’t too much trouble in getting the kids to figure out how to use the technology and the folks behind edublogs have been constantly upgrading this FREE service.
Our blog and podcast gives the students a real voice. It has allowed us to carry on our learning outside of the classroom. Thank you for that!
Check us out at www.portableradio.ca
Nathan Toft
Ottawa Carleton District School Board
I have to say edublogs offers the most versatility and ease for my students to access. My students love using it (sometimes a little to much). With edublogs I am able to stay in contact with students who are on vacation and who are home sick. I post homework and assignments on the pages and communicate with students on the blog. I have found that students are more willing to aske questions through the blog, rather than hold up their hand. The blog seems less intimidating to them. I really like the fact that you Keep it simple.
This is probably THE best blog I have ever used (not that I’m full of experience). Either way, I have never felt such an urge to post as I have with this site. It’s flexible, easy-to-use, and has some great advantages. I highly recommend this blog to anyone who just wants to post their thoughts, feelings, or anything they want.
I use Edublogs to share resources/ideas with ESL teachers and students around the world. It’s technically very friendly; there’s a great sense of community among users; and Edublogs itself couldn’t be more open to ideas and suggestions.
Edublogs is incredibly responsive to its users — in addition to providing professional development support with blogs, they could give most companies training in customer service!
Larry Ferlazzo
Luther Burbank High School
Sacramento, California, USA
Grand Prize Winner — 2007 International Reading Association Presidential Award For Reading and Technology
I have just started using Edublogs this month and I think it is excellent. It is really easy and enjoyable to use.
Being able to customise the page by adding any of the widgets and plugins is great fun as well as being useful. Also the absence of advertising gives a very professional look. All in all a fantastic FREE service for education.
I will certainly be recommending it to my fellow teachers and students come September!
PDonaghy
ICFE, Dublin, Ireland
Our new National Writing Project Summer Institute at the Hudson Valley Writing Project in New Paltz, NY knows only edublogs. And James, thanks for adding the personal touch and answering our concerns right away! BRAVO!
Bonnie K.
Edublogs provides educators and students with a safe and flexible digital environment, sleek design and, above all, continuous improvement and personalized support!
I use it for international projects and for my own professional development.
Carla Raguseo
EFL teacher
Rosario, Argentina
I am amazed at the power of Edublogs and the ease with which I set up my blog. It’s the perfect place for students to publish and get current class information, and I can filter submitted comments before they get posted. After only a few hours, I have upwards of twenty pages and categories related to my class. All I have to do now is build my pages by attaching files and links. I can’t believe I didn’t get with Edublogs sooner.
John Markealli
Language Arts Teacher
Hillsboro, Oregon
I’ve been on edublogs for eighteen months and have found it to be an outstanding service and a wonderful community. It’s more than just a place for academics, students and everyone in some way involved in teaching and learning to blog – although it is that, too – it’s a service that is driven be a core philosophy about the importance of blogging in/as/for education, and the philosophy has always been central.
Edublogs has been an excellent, easy-to-use and highlight customisable home both for my blog (tama.edublogs.org) and the blogs of many of my students and colleagues.
Dr Tama Leaver
Centre for the Advancment of Teaching and Learning
University of Western Australia
As an elementary teacher I needed an easy way to keep parents informed about assignments and class activities. This has been ideal. My first edublog was a homework blog. And though many of my students don’t have access to computers at home, enough have appreciated the site’s availablity. Now I’m using a blog to run a online bookclub for my school. I love that I can customize the blog options, ensuring a safe environment for students to comment within.
Thank you for making the technology available for us teachers and students, because we can’t afford it otherwise, and easy enough for anyone to use.
Edublogs has become one of the few cornerstone web 2.0 pieces of my classroom. I teach a junior high class (grade 7 and 8) that is heavily connected with the world. We use wikis, make videos, host international podcasts, shoot photos, and use our blogs to tie all of these pieces together. It is a service that I highly recommend using.
This is a great tool. Even though I am doing very little teaching at the moment and I haven’t had chance to see the full potential in the classroom, this has been an invaluable tool to help me in my work supporting other teachers
Edublogs is the premier place to be as an educator who is serious about blogging. A good range of templates, nice plugins and well supported forums.
Chad Outten
Director, Learning Technologies
My Learning Space
Connect :: Communicate :: Collaborate
Kudos to EduBlogs. Ease of use is fantasic. Thanks so much for this excellent tool. I am currently taking a ECMP course through the University of Regina and our first assignment was to build a blog. Having limited experience I was able to create lightinthewoods.edublogs.com quickly. I look forward to further exploring edublogs for further use in my classroom.
Prairie Lands Writing Project’s Advanced Writing With Technology Institute used edublogs to introduce teachers to integrating writing with technology in all content areas in June 2007. These were teachers who had never blogged. They were not too excited about blogging. I as the teacher had hoped to get half of them setup and maybe with one post for the first day. They amazed me. All were posting, had a blog roll setup and excited about this activity the first day. I commend edublogs for making the site so user friendly. If you go to the mistyblue site you will see that it was used as the class instructional area. Blog names came from their first writing assignment.
One of the best free services I’ve ever gotten. It isn’t just a blog, it’s a piece of art!It is a great palette for me work on and set my ideas free. Thank you
