Welcome to Blogging!  A blog is short for “web log” and presents a perfect medium for students, teachers, the school, and the community to share and give out information.  The blog site can be viewed by anyone with web access.  In order to contribute however, users must create an account and be added to a blog site by the blog administrator.

BLOGGING GUIDE LINES TO FOLLOW

Writing in the Blog:

When you are writing, there are a couple of guidelines to remember:

1. NEVER give out ANY personal information. Don’t use any names of real people (including yourself), places, addresses (street or email), phone numbers etc..

2. Use appropriate language for school. No slang, vulgar language, derogatory comments, obscene comments, swearing etc..

3. Write in English without text slang or abbreviations and use complete sentences; all responses should be written using conventional English.

4. When you disagree with someone, do it in a polite and respectful manner. Talk about topics, not people.

5. Focus on the learning topic. This is not a social blog.

6. Anything quoted, paraphrased or copied from another source MUST be cited.

Your teachers are the administrators of this blog. This means–

• If you write something inappropriate, your comment/post will not be approved and appropriate disciplinary action will take place.  No posts will be posted publicly until reviewed by an administrator.

• Teachers have the right to make comments within your posts, pointing out positive or negative aspects. I might comment on how great your ideas are and why so that others can look to your post as an exemplar. Conversely, we might comment on what your post is lacking and how to go about strengthening your response. Our purpose in doing either of these is to facilitate learning and not to criticize.

(Adapted from: Miss Hanson’s Kelvin Classroom.  Accessed July 25, 2009.  URL: http://sites.google.com/site/mrshansonskelvinclassroom/blog-guidelines).

ACCESSING YOUR STUDENT EMAIL

Instruction to be updated.

Please make sure that you can log into this account before you try and register for a blog account!!!  You MUST use this email address to create your account to use on the division blog.

CREATING A BLOG ACCOUNT

In order to be able to post pages on this site, you need to create an account and be added to a blog site by a blog administrator.  The simplest way to do this is to go the the division blog site (http://blogs.wsd1.org) and scroll down the screen until you see the Administration section on the right.  Simply click on “Create New Account” and enter the required information.

• For Username, enter your WSD user name (usually your first name and last initial).  You will be able to create a screen name later! It is imperative that you use your assigned username and email so that you can be added to the blogs that you need to access.  Your teachers MUST add you to a blog using your assigned username.
• For Email, enter your WSD email address (<username>@edu.wsd1.org).  It is imperative that you use your school division account as other email accounts will not be allowed to register on the blog.
  

Your password will be sent to your WSD account so that you can login to the site.  This may take a few minutes, once you receive your password you can log into your account, and change your password to something you will remember (I highly recommend you change it to the same password that you use to log in at school so that you WON’T forget it!)  At this point you can create a screen name for yourself to prevent your name from being posted on any comments or pages that you post.  Once you account is created, your teachers will be able to add you to any blog hosted by WSD.

Instructions for posting and using the blog will be provided by me during class.