My principal approved the blog! I spent the weekend working on it, and I broke it down into five separate pages.
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1. The blog. One of my students has already put up a post inviting people to debate the legality of graffiti. Love it!
2. Pics. This page will link to a special account I created on Flickr for this purpose. Once we have taken some photos, I anticipate that the pics page will be the site’s biggest draw. I will need to approve photos, though, or I might find myself in some hot water…
3. Resources. This page currently offers links to social services, homework help and a suicide hotline. There will be more as soon as we (and perhaps you?) think of helpful possibilities.
4. Action. I am always telling my students that they need to express their opinions to the right people. To this end, I have linked directly to the contact pages for our senators and representatives. I am debating putting the school board’s information on there. Keep job, or promote dissent?
5. Fun. I am linking to some game sites, and letting the students choose what else to put on this page. It has to be clean, and of course I will moderate it.
I’ve already ran into one snafu when a student entered her personal website information in the WordPress registration part of the blog. (She is registered as an author.) I clicked over and saw a pic of some hands holding hallucinogenic mushrooms. I really don’t want to (technically) know these things, because I don’t want to be in the position of policing their on and offline lives. It would defeat the creative purpose of this blog. So, the new rule is no links to personal blogs or MySpace pages. Given the population of students that I work with, it is pretty much a guarantee that there will be illegal and/or inappropriate activity on those sites. Or so they’ve told me.
At any rate, I’m happy that it is approved and up. Hopefully, all will run fairly smoothly and you will not be reading about me in the paper!
Commercial break:
I need to add that within fifteen minutes of registering my domain name with Dreamhost, I had used the one-click install for WordPress and the site was live. Much better than my old Yahoo account! I’m the sort of person who needs things to happen when they are on my mind, or they slip through the cracks. I really love Dreamhost, since I am hosting five domains on one account with no problems. This is saving me tons of money. You can save more money than I did if you decide to sign-up and use the ILOVEBLOGGRRL $97 promo code. Yeah, I know some of you guys have heard this before, but it is worth repeating! Especially since their customer service dudes answer my idiotic questions in about five minutes or so. Believe me, this is a service I need…
Woohoo! I’m glad that it’s online. Every time I look at that screencap I can’t help but got reminded of my own site. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because it’s also hosted on DreamHost with a one-click setup?
What a wonderful thing you’ve done for your students! I wish it all the success in the world. You should be DAMN proud of yourself!
Excellent work with the new blog … that will give the kids a wonderful outlet and new ways to connect information that is meaningful to them. Yeah, Michelle! xx, JP/deb
Michelle: the site looks wonderful. This is a great thing you’re doing for your students. I hope they use it as an outlet to express themselves and it becomes a cool place for them to hangout.
Please keep us updated on how this works for your students. I also think you’re quite wise in not allowing outside links to places like personal myspaces. Unfortunately, too many teens post thinks on their myspaces that could get “us” into trouble.
I loved to read and write while I was in school, but because of budget restrictions, we really didn’t have a creative outlet for things that could help someone like me. There were no book clubs, no short story or poetry magazines; there was barely a school newspaper to speak of… I am so glad that you created something like ‘the blog’ so that kids realize that reading and writing aren’t just fundamentals, they are wonderful ways of improving creativity and all around education!
Kudos!
I love it.. great idea. I’ll be commenting on the graffiti post shortly, to remind your young ‘uns that if they should graffiti anything of MINE, no matter how artistically inclined they feel, I shall reciprocate by graffiti-ing their foreheads with the use of dry erase markers, the ink of which is impossible to remove from skin - meaning that they’ll have to go to school wearing such fun sayings as, “I WET MY BED” and “MY MOMMY HAS A MUSTACHE”.
Congratulations Michelle, looks like a great site. I was wondering what you’ve been up to lately. I always look forward to your posts. That’s a pretty generous discount on DreamHost you’re promoting. Do a lot of people use it? Emma
this is such a good idea, i’m glad they approved of it. keep us updated on how it works out
Bravo!
That’s a really neat idea for a site for your students.