School Jotter recently became fully integrated with a range of brand new e-learning apps. Since the launch of our Jotter Suite, we’ve been busy adding to it, with more apps due for release during the course of 2014.
This week, we’re starting a monthly blog post – in which we feature one of these apps. To start us off, we’ve taken a look at Bloganywhere, our blogging app that we released last month.
Blogging is a growing phenomenon in schools. Why? Because it meets so many curriculum criteria. From improving literacy and typing skills to encouraging online collaboration, keeping a blog is fun and creative. That’s why we created Bloganywhere.
Currently, Bloganywhere has a plethora of features that make blogging engaging and easy for pupils. Every child in your school can be given access to the dashboard where the blogging app can be found. From here creating a blog is easy.
The pupil can create a new blog by simply clicking ‘Create Blog’ – the blog is where the individual blog posts will be posted to. It works very much like files and folders on your computer – except in this case other pupils, as well as the teacher, can comment on blog posts within any blog.
Once a blog has been created, pupils can start writing blog posts! These can cover any topic – and can form part of an overall task, or a task in their own right. The sample we’ve chosen in the picture is a football match report; blogging is a great tool for getting boys writing as it allows them to write about something they enjoy, and also gives quieter pupils a voice.
If you have School Merits, our online rewards system, each pupil’s avatar will become their ‘profile picture’ on their blog, as you can see from our picture above.
Once a blog post has been written by a pupil, it can be shared with their peers – helped by the tagging facility (using words that describe your blog to make it easier for other pupils to find – in the same way Twitter works). Commenting on each other’s blog post encourages collaborative working and thinking, and also helps to develop pupils’ social skills.
Over the coming months, we have plenty of great developments planned for Bloganywhere. One of the key new features will be the ability to pick pupils’ blog posts and publish them directly to your School Jotter website. This will mean parents, the school and the wider community can become part of your own blogging phenomenon!
To book a free Bloganywhere demo, click here. You can also download our latest free guide, Seven Reasons Why Schools Should Blog, here.
