ePortfolios

Why Blog with your students?

Educational blogs and their effects on pupils' writing

Examples of ePortfolio Student Blogs

Mrs. Cassidy's Class (Kindergarten)
Mrs. Holden's Class (Gr. 4)
Jaquelyn’s ePortfolio
Brooke’s Blog
The Learning Hub (Jr. High)
The Learning Hub (High School)

Examples of Teacher Professional Blogs

Mrs. Cassidy's Professional Blog
Paul Huebl's Professional Blog

Platforms

Edublogs
Cost: Free for teacher blog & $39.95/year to add student accounts.
Pros: ability to moderate posts & comments, wide variety of templates & many options to personalize. With Campus Press blogs can follow students year to year.

Edublogs YouTube Channel
Edublogs User Guide
Mobile Blogging info

Kidblog
Cost: $29/year
Pros: moderate posts & comments, easy simple setup and user friendly dashboard.

Freshgrade
Cost: FREE
Pros: separate apps for students, parents and teacher. Teacher app lets you easily record audio, video and pictures and add them to the portfolio in seconds. Parents alerts when portfolio is updated.

Useful links

Copyright:
2Learn- copyright & teaching the basics

Images:
The Noun Project– a community building icons that anyone can understand
Pixabay– Free images
Compfight– A Flickr Search Tool
15 Best Sites for Open Source Images
Photos For Class – The quick and safe way to find and cite images for class!
Pics4Learning – Free photos for education
27 Superb Sites With Royalty Free Stock Images For Commercial Use
Google Image Search Adds Usage Rights to Search Tools
Research Tools in Google Docs– allows students to easily find and cite images in a Google Doc

Music:
Incompetech– royalty free music. Search by genre or feel.
Soundation– online music studio with recording, effects, virtual instruments and over 700 free loops and sounds
Audio Nautix – Online collection created by Jason Shaw.
FMA– Free Music Archive. Search by genre.
Jamendo– royalty free music downloads