Digital Portfolios via Student Blogs

I have been researching digital student portfolios for several months now. After attending the TCEA conference a few weeks ago, I decided that individual student blogs would make the best platform for what I am wanting. I chose to set up a kidblog account for each student in my class. I browsed several sites before I chose kidblog, but I really felt like kidblog offered the most user-friendly interface. My students have only begun their work, and already, they love posting to their blogs!

Here is our class kidblog address if you are interested. You can't see student posts unless you are logged in to the site and have permission to view our blog, so that makes the site safe for kids:.

Find us at http://kidblog.org/MrsCarrsClass8/.

As you can see, the site is organized so that from the teacher homescreen, I can easily navigate posts by student, by clicking on their names down the righthand side, or by date, by clicking on the posts in the center of the screen.

After I created my account and inputted all of my students' names, I collaborated with our campus technology teacher to create lessons to introduce the new blogs to my class. She showed my students how to access the site, how to log in, and the basics regarding navigating the site. They picked everything up very quickly, and they eagerly got to work writing their first posts. I asked them to answer this question in their first post: How do you think we could use our blogs in our classroom?

Here are some sample screen-shots of their responses.

This week, they wrote their second posts. I asked students to choose their two favorite pieces of "Show, Not Tell" writing, and post them with a reflection about why they chose the samples.

Here is one student's post.