I've become convinced of this after helping teachers create class websites in Google Sites, watching teachers deal with the difficulties, confusion, and limitations. Other teachers have chosen to use Edmodo or Weebly instead; still others continue to use HTML editors and build sites hosted on our own district server. What pushed me to Blogger was a session at the GAFE Summit in Coronado earlier this month, presented by Jen Roberts (@JenRoberts1) of Point Loma High School. Jen made a great case for teachers using Blogger as a class website, and convinced me whole-heartedly. Since then, I've tried out Blogger on a couple of teachers, and they've been very positive about it. I think it's easier to use and set up than Google Sites, and allows you to give a better view of your class to students and parents. (Here's a link to Jen's 9th-grade English class blog, as an example.)
Blogger is part of the Google Apps suite, so you already have an account through your district login. As with Sites, you can create as many blogs as you like, so you can have separate blogs for different classes, as well as a personal blog for reflection, if you choose. You can post daily or weekly updates for your class, as you choose. Each post can include photos or videos, formatted text, links to class files, or links to outside resources. You can add separate pages for particular projects, topics, or resources. You can have a sidebar with gadgets like a search bar so students can search your site, or an email subscription tool so students or parents can get your latest post sent to them automatically (look to the right of this post). You can schedule posts to appear at a future time, like at the beginning of your class the next morning. You can enable or disable comments for your entire blog or for individual posts. Blogger can do so much that Google Sites cannot. You should be using Blogger for your class website.
If you're not yet convinced, here are the resources from Jen's presentation; she makes the case better than I can. If you're ready to get started, the next several posts in this series will show you how to create a blog, how to post on it, how to create extra pages, how to format and customize your blog, and how to add widgets to the sidebar. Let's start blogging!
