paradise unplugged

After reading 2 of Ms Cofino’s articles on setting up her class blog, details on how she set up Linked Gmail accounts and then how she set up the class blog on Learnerblogs, I was sort of prepared for LG asking me about setting up a blog for her Stage 4 Core Class.

The only hurdle that we have in place is that G-Mail is blocked by our College’s Internet Filter. Now having recently seen a request to unblock this site be knocked back I had to think of a work around.

Luckily this is very easy. We run exchange 2003 at our campus, and this would allow me to create an email address for each student and attach it to LG’s mailbox. Then I can setup a rule so that when an email comes in for each student, it will then get moved to a folder set up for that student under LG’s mailbox hierarchy.

Once this is done LG can set up her class to use a Single Class Blog or even set up Individual Blog’s for each student.

Watch this space as we update the progress, the pro’s, and the con’s (if there are any that is).

Now all I need to do is get my hands on her Tablet…

Edit Sat 23rd Feb ‘08:

I was reading the comments to Kim’s original posts when I noticed that Lindajay had added the following to her comment:

“Another good thing to do when starting a class/students blog is to set up a spreadsheet to record details as you set up students’ blogs (names, passwords, etc.) so that can then be used to generate cards to hand out to students, and a list for later reference if things are forgotten!”

This should have been fairly obvious, but it slipped my thinking, though I haven’t had a chance to talk to LG about this yet. We’ve both had a busy schedule of late, which has made finding time to discuss our plans difficult.

I’ll get LG to give me her class list with preferred email details for her students “dummy accounts” and details of their blogs (in an excel file) and I’ll set up the rest for her ready for her class.

Now, will she want to use “live writer” too. Better follow that up next….