Setting up Student Weblogs with Drupal
At Lewis Elementary, we recently set up a web-logging system for our students and teachers at the 4th and 5th grade level. With the help of Steve Burt, and with some suggestions from Bill Fitzgerald, we installed Drupal and created accounts for our teachers and students . Drupal has a add on feature similar to plugins called Modules. Using the UserPlus module, we were able to quickly create the student accounts for. The next step involved teaching the students how to log in and edit posts.
We are also using Gallery as an image archive tool and Drupal has a module that allows you to incorporate the Gallery images within Drupal. There is also a plugin for iPhoto that makes it very easy for students to add images to our Gallery archive and also take advantage of organizational tools such at tagging. The next step is to set up teachers with RSS readers so they can easily track student work and read and respond.
Since the students interact not only with their homeroom teacher, but also various other teachers such as ELL, special education, music, technology and such, we are hoping that within a few weeks to have those staff members also trained on accessing the system. We are looking to use this system as a place where student assignments along with student blog posts and learning reflections can be saved and shared, creating a place for dialog and discussion. Currently all the posts are behind a login, but we are planning on creating a method where selected posts can be made public and start the process of expanding the audience for our students' work.
