The new header is up and what a great photo it is! It’s very much like the one I had for my class last year, only this year I had the students arrange themselves in three rows instead of two in order to see them a little more clearly. The photo doesn’t just look good, but it serves a very practical purpose. Having the students create their own personalised mask reinforces, in a physical way, one of the most important aspect of the whole blogging experience – protection of our identity and ourselves.

Some of the students, nine to be exact, were in my class last year and are still blogging away. However, that means twenty are brand new to blogging and are about to embark on a few necessary preliminary activities (as mentioned briefly in my previous post) to prepare themselves for the blogging year ahead. The first activity, which we hope to start this week if we can get the computers (which teacher hasn’t uttered those words before?) will be all about looking at other blogs to see what exactly makes a good one. We’ll be looking at layout, colour (especially text), images, frequency of posts, widgets, topic variety – in fact the whole kit and caboodle! The next step will be to look at the Blogging Guides page on this blog (to the right) and having an in-depth discussion of: the importance of privacy, the format for posts, the etiquette for comments and the serious issue of copyright.

The students’ blogs have already been created and are just waiting for them to be ready. Not long now – watch this space!