Student Blogging

[heidiadams]

We have teachers in our district who would like to have a class blog. The comment on the old feature idea for student blogs said that there are other blogging services, but having the student blog inside Canvas will help students maintain privacy. Another issue is that teachers would like to learn one platform rather than several platforms. We also have Office 365, and O365 has a blog feature. So could the Office 365 blogging feature be integrated in Canvas? 

[ryan_corris]

I agree that this would be helpful. It could possibly alleviate the possibilty of one more password and username for students to remember if using something outside of Canvas. With our SSO set up already, blogging within Canvas, even using an LTI of some sort, could be beneficial. 

[Chris_Hofer]

heidiadams ...

I'm curious to know what part of O365 are you currently using for blogs?  Could you give a bit more detail on this for us?

[heidiadams]

Hi  @Chris_Hofer ‌

We actually just started looking into #0365 blogging, so we haven't used it yet. We are in the exploring stage! But it is in our O365 accounts in the profile section. There seems to be a newer blogging feature called Delve, and an additional older version of a blog. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss specifics! heidi.adams@lakotaonline.com

[Chris_Hofer]

Interesting.  I also have Delve in O365 and found the area to start a blog.  I was looking through some of the online documentation, and I came across this:

If enabled by your Office 365 tenant administrator, you can create a personal blog to quickly share ideas and information with others in your company. Everyone in your company can view your personal blog by default, but people outside the company can't.

So, I'm not sure if that would have an impact on how you could possibly use it in Canvas?

[laurakgibbs]

I'm a big believer in blogs, and I'm working with college students, so blogging outside the LMS is both possible and also very desirable. A big part of blogging is about being able to reach real audiences, and I'm really happy when students want to share their blogs with their family and with their friends, as they do. With this new school year, I've been trying to document how I set up and run a blogging network in my classes each semester, and I've written four posts so far:

Fall 2017: Story of a Blog Network (1) 

Fall 2017: Story of a Blog Network (2)

Fall 2017: Story of a Blog Network (3) — A Blog of One's Own 

Fall 2017: Story of a Blog Network (4) — Student Comments, Week 1 

Since I go with the open option in my Canvas courses also, you can see the blog streams for my classes here: since I teach fully online, the blogs ARE the classes, and it's really fun to be able to see the students at work in basically real-time, and the students also enjoy being able to see how people are hard at work, each on their own assignments which they are sharing via their blogs:

Mythology-Folklore blog stream
Indian Epics blog stream

Those streams are "in" Canvas because I take the RSS and then display that in Canvas with Inoreader.

So, while I am personally not a fan of the idea of Canvas building a blogging tool when there are so many excellent blogging tools out there already, I am a big fan of blogging-for-teaching. Here's a graphic I share with my students as they explore the idea of educational blogs:

Blogging for Learning: Mulling it Over

[heidiadams]

laurakgibbs‌ Thank you so much for the blogging information! I love the infographic!

[laurakgibbs]

Isn't that wonderful? Silvia Tolisano's Langwitches blog is full of great stuff, very much worth browsing! And I've been blogging with my students for many years now; I can't imagine teaching any other way. If you have questions or just want to bounce around ideas, let me know! 🙂

[grant_macdonald]

I use blogs and I agree that it would be good to have something inside Canvas.

Possible work around is to use Office Class Notebook which integrates via an LTI, or just O365 blogs.

I thought though that the forum could be used. Just create a forum topic for each student and they can post to that topic. This also allows other students to respond to posts. If the developers use the same code as the forum and just tweak the user interface, could they more easily add the blog feature?

[penny_christens]

A partnership with EduBlogs might be an option. I'd love to see students login via Canvas LMS, but then be able to retain their blog as they move from my class.

Thank you for bringing this up!

[laurakgibbs]

In terms of log-ins, my school is using Domain of One's Own, which is a movement to give students their own web space (not just for blogs, although that is by far the most common use), and the log-in for that system is integrated with our other campus log-ins, including Canvas. So, that is a kind of streamlining that can happen with log-ins in terms of how a given school sets things up.

I cannot say enough good things about Domain of One's Own; it is an initiative from Reclaim Hosting, totally built with educators and students in mind. More about that here:

Reclaim Hosting | Domain of One’s Own 

To get a sense of how that works at my school, check out the "Best of OUCreate" (OUCreate is how my school has branded it's DoOO project):

Best of OU Create 11/13-11/19 – The Best of OU Create 

One of my students is featured there this week! 🙂

[mstephenson]

Hello Laura Gibbs;

I am a little late to the party! 

1. How do you have student feeds show in canvas? Can you clarify steps, please?
2. Are the student's feeds tied to an assignment in canvas for grading purpose and recording? 
3. Do you use rubrics?

Thanks! I am interested in utilizing a different format for student journals?

Respectfully,

Martha Stephenson

[laurakgibbs]

Hi  @mstephenson ‌! I've documented by blog network process here:

https://community.canvaslms.com/people/laurakgibbs/blog/tags#/?tags=network2017 

(those are posts here at my Canvas blog)... you can see the feeds in action here:

Myth-Folklore | Indian Epics

The students do their own recording at Canvas; they complete a simple checklist for completeness of each blog post (not a qualitative rubric, just a checklist), and record their points that way. Here's how that works:

https://community.canvaslms.com/people/laurakgibbs/blog/2017/04/30/points-based-grading-student-grad... 

(I do no grading of any kind... #TTOG! ... details about that here: Grading.MythFolklore.net)

I guess I am the world's biggest fan of student blog networks. Or at least the biggest fan here at Canvas Community. 🙂

[ProductPanda]

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