Student Blog Started!

Last Friday we met with our students for the second time. One more girl joined the group, so we are now altogether 15 (13 students and 2 adults). Not all of them will be able to travel though, I’m sure. I had uploaded all the photos from last week into the media library in their WordPress site and we started to learn how to use the blog. We asked the students to find the photos they took in the media library, make a new post and add the photo in it together with the word that they were originally given (see the post from the first lesson here). This is what the student blog looks like now:

There is always a bit of hassle in the beginning when the students create their WordPress usernames but otherwise we were surprised how well it all went. And the students were proud of their achievements. Next week we will be editing the posts just a little bit. We want to add tags and maybe write a sentence or two about the pictures. It would be fun to do this again later so that we take pictures of the sights in Porvoo and post them in the same place. We are also looking forward to sharing this site with the Latvian and Swedish students. I have invited Gaida and Catrin to join us and they can invite their students.

You can invite users in WordPress either by using their WordPress usernames or by using their email addresses. When you log in to WordPress at http://wordpress.com you can find your way to the Dashboard where you can find all options in the left margin.

When writing a new post, you’ll get an editor window like this:

I think it’s important that we put all the posts into categories (see the box in the lower right hand side) because we will have so many posts that otherwise it will just be a never-ending stream of random posts. So make a new category when you have a new task for the kids to do. If you want to add photos to your posts, you click in the camera icon above the editor window.

I don’t know about your students, but ours are so excited about publishing things for the whole world to see. Blogging is soooo cooool these days. :) However, I think the students shouldn’t post anything about themselves here. No last names, no birthdays. We’ll do that in some other, more private place. It would be fun to pair them as soon as possible so that they could start writing emails to each other. We already have everyone’s email addresses, I think you Catrin and Gaida can see them in the WordPress Dashboard when you go to the link called Users in the left margin. As you can remember we wrote in the Nordplus Junior application that both us Finns and the Swedes will visit Latvia and Latvians will visit Sweden. Maybe Gaida you can ask your students to pick one Finn each who they want to host, find the students email addresses in the student blog dashboard and start writing. It will be a wonderful surprise for them to receive their messages! Our students are so excited about the upcoming trip next spring! We have now sent letters to their homes asking if they are allowed to travel and as soon as we get the final number I will let you know. We will also have to make a contract with the bus company as soon as possible just to make sure there is a bus and a driver available at the time we need it. What would be a good time for us to visit you Gaida? What time would be suitable for you to travel Catrin? In the previous years we’ve traveled at the end of April or  at the end of May. We will arrive late on a Sunday and leave early on a Saturday, we’ll just have to find a week that will be suitable for everyone.

Looking forward to helping these students of ours become citizens of the world! I’m so glad to have you to work with us!