Sunday, September 4, 2011

Use TEAM BLOGS to keep parents in-the-know!

The blog you are reading right now is a great example of a team blog. Janae set up a couple of different authors to be able to post on it so that many people can share what they learn in one place. You can do a similar thing in your school. It is especially useful if you are in a team such as in a collaborative specialist model at elementary, or in a team model like at middle school.

Here are the basic steps:

  1. Create a blog at blogger.com.
  2. Under SETTINGS tab, select PERMISSIONS.
  3. Select the ADD AUTHORS button and add the Google Username of anyone you'd like to give permission to post on the blog.
Okay, so that's the basic series of steps. But you will probably want to make it so that parents can subscribe to your blog with their email address. That way, whenever you make an update, those updates will not only exist on your blog but will be pushed to the subscriber's email address. Pretty slick! So here's how you add that function:

  1. Under the DESIGN tab, select ADD A GADGET wherever you'd like their email input box to appear.
  2. When the gadget window pops open, select FOLLOW BY EMAIL and it will be added to the blog.
It's as simple as that! 

Cheers,

Brian