Digital Privacy is Everything!

Always follow these few simple steps:

• Use your first name only to identify yourself.
• Leave off your home email, your street address, phone number, or school name.
• Don’t share specifics of your daily routines that involve time and location (ie where & when your soccer practice is, which park you go to…)

Based on the excellent Huzzah! Blog. Check it out.

This site is moderated and all comments will need to be approved before they will appear. These rules meet with the Department of Education and Training’s Internet Publishing Guidelines and will help keep our children safe.

Guidelines for good posts.

• Be topical – write about things that have grabbed your attention and you think need to be discussed. The more interesting it is the more people will want to read it.
• Don’t make your posts too long – keep them to the point as people sometimes get bored if the post drags on
• Try not to use “Hi” or “Bye” as this can make your blog seem a little immature.
• Review any comments that people have made – they have gone to the effort, so should you.

How To Comment

I got the idea for this on Mrs. Kolbert’s blog.

How to write a good quality comment…

Write your comment like a letter starting it off with, for instance, “Dear Jenna” or “Dear Mr. Hope.”

Compliment the writer in a specific way, ask a question, and/or add new information to the post. For example, if the post is about hurricanes, maybe you know something else about hurricanes that you can add. More information is terrific.

It’s ok to be critical and say you don’t like something but be nice and constructive about it. That means offer a solution or a better way.

Write your comment about the post.

Check your comment for correct spelling, grammar and punctuation before you submit it.

Don’t reveal any personal information about yourself in your comment.

Be nice! If you wouldn’t say it to the person’s face with a teacher standing next to you, then don’t say it online.

Copyright

Copyright is a big issue for bloggers. We have to make sure that the images and videos we use on our blogs are truly free and appropriate for use. This means we don’t just carry out a Google search for just any old image, but we look for ones that we are allowed to use. Any resource (text, images, video, music etc.) that we find online and we wish to use needs to include a creative commons license, similar to the one on this page below the Clustr Map. Two great options to make sure you are safe include Creative Commons Search and the Advanced search option on Google where you can select the right license type (look for the cog).  A great place to find more information, and where some of this is taken from, is The Edublogger by Ronnie Burt. Have a read and scroll down to find Where To Find The Goods to find links and information on appropriate resources.