"Frustration"

"Frustration" is the subject line in my inbox.  The email from my student has only this screenshot:

Frustration was definitely the right sentiment.  Monday, we were in the computer lab to set up everyone's blog and all but a couple students kept getting this message.  Trying with different browsers yielded the same result.  Even students who used their phones had the same result.

Unfortunately that meant setting up the blog had to be homework, and everyone had to kind of improvise a little bit.  Thankfully we had the great handout from 20timeineducation.com, and most people just worked on this to brainstorm what they wanted their blog to look like.

After following up on the invalid message.  It appears to be something that happens a lot when multiple blogs are being set up within a short amount of time from the same IP address. Since we were all using the same one (even those on their phones via wifi), Google perceived it as multiple requests from the same computer and treated it as though we were some auto-bot and blocked us all.  It doesn't sound like there's much that can be done about it from our end.  So, next year I'll require that part for homework I guess and we'll spend class time tweaking the settings and starting the first blog post. The take home message: if you're going to set up blogs with blogger, you likely won't be able to have the whole class set it up at the same time at school.


Permission for blogging
Monday I also passed out a permission slip for parents and guardians to sign regarding creation of,  and posting on, blogs online for all to access.  I know that some educators choose to keep blogs restricted, especially for elementary aged children.  Blog services, like Kid Blog, give teachers a lot of great control over privacy settings.  But I feel since I teach juniors and seniors, they're close enough to adulthood that the training wheels can come off.  We've gone over digital citizenship earlier this year, and again with the permission slip, and they generally have a good handle on what it means to be posting online.

Here's the permission slip that I used, which was modified from one I found on Joy Kirr's plethora of resources on Genius Hour.  I'm so thankful for all the great resources out there from teachers trying this already.  It's nice to build on what's been vetted already and tailor to my needs.

Where we are now, and where we're going: 
Most all students have set up the blogs by now.  Here's the handout I gave them (again, manipulating one I found from another 20 Time teacher).  Now they're expected to make their first post, which they requested will be due the Tuesday night following our 20 Time day.  I plan to make blog posts due every other week, and have them comment on 3 of each others' post in the weeks between.  I'm excited to see their first posts next week.  I'll be sharing their links as they begin posting!