Independent Reading Blog @ Heritage

On Friday I met with 2 middle school teachers to discuss blogging.  They are looking for a way for students to blog about books the read independently.  We discussed various ways to go about this including the eChalk blog, Goodreads and Blogger.  They want students to be able to see this and read about each others' books.  They would like to start using this in their Lit Studies classes but eventually have the whole school participate - which is AWESOME!  I can just imagine teachers and students sharing all about what they are reading!  The possibilites are endless....

I spent some time Friday and today researching how to make this efficient and effective.  I think Blogger will work best because it is easy to use, secure, and all kids already have accounts.   One thing they were looking for is a way to separate posts by class period.  There is no way to have multiple pages in a blog all be "blog" pages.  The only way to separate posts in any way is to create a page that links to a label.  So, I created a page in the blog called "4th Period" and had it point to the url http://practiceblog87654.blogspot.com/search/label/4th, (name of the blog, label).  This is a way to sort posts by certain labels.  You can also separate them by clicking on the little label link on the sidebar.

I did some test posts and spent a little time customizing the look.  Here is the result so far....

I emailed Kerry and Christine and am waiting to hear back on their thoughts :)