My kindergarten classroom blog

What an adorable and fantastic idea!
How great to offer up not just an “inside look” to the parents of the kids in the class, but to incorporate your ideas as a teacher for sharing with other teachers, and to add in the kids as an integral part of building the site (I love the one about handing off a digital camera to a student to record the day!).

This is just awesome… great for the parents, other parents and teachers, and the kids too! I love it.

How wonderful! The many features of the site (such as audio, photos, and voicemail) would be a delight. I bet your kids’ parents love this.

The horizontal nav/menu buttons (under the header) don’t appear to have words labeling them?

Do your readers really use trackback/pingback? That seems rather bloggerly and not necessarily classroom-useful (I’m just guessing/asking this). I was a little surprised at the mix of web-technical stuff (like number of hits, and trackback links), alongside stuff that I think less-web-savvy parents and students would use.

In some browsers the nav buttons do not have labels, but in safari/camino/firefox they do. I know in Mozilla they do not show up. To be honest with you I am not sure what a trackback or pingback is, but what wordpress allows me to do is to send the posts right to their email boxes if they subscribe (and they do). It also allows me to make quick and easy posts through a browser – this is crucial in my work day! I am rather new to wordpress, only been using it for a few months – but its basic set up allows me to accomplish certian things very, very easily. More easily than Dreamweaver or Rapidweaver.

Thanks for your kind words about my site. I have a masters in the use of technology in education and have made it my career goal to influence teachers and parents to catch up to the rest of the world. I hold tech nights for the parents of my students to teache them how to view and download content – also, how to have clean hygene on the internet! We have a great relationship and these tools help to foster that.

I would love to know more about what a pingback or trackback is and what browser you were using where you could not see the labels on the nav buttons. Thanks so much for your comments. Again, I’m new to wordpress and blogging software, but know that this is the best tool to use as a teacher in the classroom.

First, I am on Firefox & did not see the labels on the nav.

About pingbacks/trackbacks, you can find better descriptions in the Codex, but to put it simply: if you’re not receiving any trackback-style-comments from your readers, then I think you should delete the trackback link to reduce clutter & avoid your visitors seeing a term that they don’t understand. Basically, if a lot of your readers ARE bloggers themselves, they might “send you trackbacks.” But if the parents/kids don’t have their own blogs (I assume they don’t) they probably wouldn’t use trackbacks.

I have to say it – This site of yours goes far beyond the reaches of the parents of just the kids in your classroom this year. It most likely reaches other kindergarten teachers across the country, and even other parents of kindergarteners.

I think leaving the trackbacks is a good idea – it’ll basically show you who’s linking to your stuff, and what they say about it. So it’s like offering up a “review” of your site/teachings/etc that you don’t even have to ask for, and would be a good tool for other education bloggers I think.

You can find a very basic description of TB and pings here in the Codex: Introduction_to_Blogging#Managing_Comments.

The site is really great! Viewing in FF I cannot see the horizontal menu labels ??

Thanks for the replies. I’ll have to take some time to consider the trackbacks. Thanks for the info. I am using a Mac, so I wonder if FF on the Mac may be different than on the PC. Hmmmm . . . . I bet this is a theme issue, though. I’ll have to look into that, too. My parents have been having no problems (that they have shared with me). Mostly using IE6 and FF. I’ll dig into that, though.

Thanks for the info. My parents really are into checking out what their kids are doing – I like to be alone in the room with them, so it is a good trade off. Hopefully my school will let me make a page for them. I think that would be great.

I think your site is wonderful! I applaud you and going above and beyond your duties as a teacher and providing a great way to keep parents more involved in the daily school activities of their children and to also have a great platform in which the students can later look back and relive their memories, via the way back machine ?? Thumbs up to you. And the features you have; audio and such- makes your site truly something that all schools need to start looking to for ideas

Your site is great. But in IE the sidebar comes below your posts.

Thanks for the compliments. Bringing parents into my classroom is exactly the point of using the web as a tool like this. I absolutely love the capabilities with software and plugins like these. Right now blogging is illegal in my school district and I am about to get slammed for it, or even blocked by my school’network. The next few weeks will be very interesting for me. We will see what the future will bring for my site!

Right now blogging is illegal in my school district and I am about to get slammed for it, or even blocked by my school’network.

That’s a shame!
Last time I’ve read about a ban on blogs was in a dictatorship (in case you are curious)

That’s so absurd… I’d be running to the school board if I were the parent of one of your kids… I’d be rioting.

I can understand the district wanting it monitored or whatever, for example, teachers are allowed to blog about their classrooms/lessons/etc whatever, but must submit the URL information to someone or something like that…

But to ban it completely is absurd.

Did you make adjustments to your nav bar? I’m using FF 1.5 and see “Home” “Online Classroom” “Drop me a Message”, etc.
Others have already expressed their congrats and I will add mine. Great site – really great for a beginner.
I’ve installed Scary Monkey for a few clients and as you learn more you will find it very flexible and configureable…so good choice there.
Keep up the passion!

I am looking forward to stretching out in this theme! Thanks for the info on censorship. Right now I am looking to learn all that I can. I am looking for a better way to stream or share video in the most usable format. If you have any ideas of plugins, let me know.

Right now our district wants to host all teacher sites and allows only 4mb of disk space. Not enough for multimedia content. I also need control of the files and php and mysql services. All of this is not allowed in my district. Teachers are supposed to print off every page of a web site if a change is made, then submit them and the digital files to the media specialist, then to the principal, then to a tech committee and then the the main administrator for even the slightest change. This system simply doesn’t work. Most of these people don’t know a jpeg from a png, why would I trust them with the complications of web site files and directories? I don’t.

Many of my parents are aware that I am breaking district policy because they have asked for a school web site (which I am not qualified to do) and know the policies. There is a group of my parents making us tee-shirts that say “I make illegal educational web sites” with my web address on the back. Kind of funny, but I told them to hold off unless I get banned. They are ready to go to the paper and school board if this happens. Ugggg, the drama!

But it is a good thing and I am going to continue and see if some of those old policies can be looked at again. Thanks for your kind words, helps me know that I am on the right track and this is all worth something. I value the opinions of you all on the board here.

I am a first year teacher starting in 2 weeks! Obviously I am teaching kindergarten since I am on this blog. I am so excited but a little nervous. I am beginning to set up my classroom and don’t know where to begin! Any suggestions??