Blogger Walkthrough

The principal of one of my schools has asked that all teachers have a website by early in the year. While I plan to do a pre-school workshop on it I also put together a guide on Blogger for teachers that want to get a jump start on it using the most excellent screenshot/guide app, Clarify 2.

In the email I sent to my teachers I mentioned that while they were free to use any website creator site or software they wish (and I know several of them are already using Wordpress, Weebly, and others) I personally like Blogger and think it works best for the following reasons:

1. It's easy to use and very customizable if you so choose. I've covered the basics in the guide but I encouraged my staff to explore it and check out all of the other functionality that's available.

2. While they will need to use a personal Gmail account to access it (it's currently blocked under our work accounts) when it becomes available within those accounts it will be very easy to move it over from personal to work and access everything from one place.

3. By using Blogger teachers can post an entry at the beginning of each week that covers the upcoming assignments, assessments, SOL objectives, etc. This not only covers the principal's requirement that they have a page for alerts and updates but perhaps best of all it gives parents and students the ability to sign up for email notifications when entries are posted.

The walkthrough can be downloaded here. (PDF format.)