Comments on: 21 Classes: New blog engine for teachers and students http://www.teach42.com/2007/03/20/21-classes-new-blog-engine-for-teachers-and-students/ Education and Technology by Steve Dembo Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:37:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Jamie Tubbs http://www.teach42.com/2007/03/20/21-classes-new-blog-engine-for-teachers-and-students/#comment-64094 Jamie Tubbs Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:00:33 +0000 http://www.teach42.com/2007/03/20/21-classes-new-blog-engine-for-teachers-and-students/#comment-64094 I love 21Publish! I've been using it for two years now and have endorsed at every presentation I've given on blogs. In fact, whenever I teach a hands-on session I have the participants set up a community on 21Publish. I love it for all the reasons mentioned in your post. But the best part for me is that I am in complete control--I can close the community to everybody but my students; nobody can join unless I approve them and nobody but my students can comment on posts. To me, this is FAR more important than editors, categories, or themes. This is what makes my heavily involved parents approve the use of it for their children. I love 21Publish! I’ve been using it for two years now and have endorsed at every presentation I’ve given on blogs. In fact, whenever I teach a hands-on session I have the participants set up a community on 21Publish.

I love it for all the reasons mentioned in your post. But the best part for me is that I am in complete control–I can close the community to everybody but my students; nobody can join unless I approve them and nobody but my students can comment on posts. To me, this is FAR more important than editors, categories, or themes. This is what makes my heavily involved parents approve the use of it for their children.

]]> By: Ben http://www.teach42.com/2007/03/20/21-classes-new-blog-engine-for-teachers-and-students/#comment-63129 Ben Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:58:19 +0000 http://www.teach42.com/2007/03/20/21-classes-new-blog-engine-for-teachers-and-students/#comment-63129 I used the 21Publish service last year with my sixth graders and had wonderful results. My assumption is that this "new" 21Classes service is a rebranding of their general commercial blogging service, but I was very pleased with the funcionality of the blogging engine in general. It was nice to have them all setup their own accounts, so I didn't have to manually do it, and then turn off registration so I didn't have any leaches on it. The customization was HUGE for the kids. They had all sorts of personal images in their sidebars (lots of Yu-Gi-Oh!), custom colors, which were hard on the eyes, but it was nice to have a closed system for me to keep track of comments and posts. It was especially nice to be able to have all innapropriate comments sent to me first, before they were made live. The commenting system is a little wonky, with students having to navigate to the original post in their dashboard in order to approve or delete comments on it (thought that was a bit unintuitive after using wordpress). Otherwise it's a great tool. No offense to Will Richardson, as I respect his judgement when it comes to the read/write web, but why wouldn't a company like 21Publish get some classroom teachers to evaluate it for them, since they are the target audience. I know Will taught for a very long time, but a couple years on the lecture circuit can greatly change your perspective. Just a hint the next time Discovery needs you to find someone to trial a new piece of software or service (teachers LOVE hearing from the visionaries and what they thin, but we really want to know what the "average joe" teacher thinks about it). I used the 21Publish service last year with my sixth graders and had wonderful results. My assumption is that this “new” 21Classes service is a rebranding of their general commercial blogging service, but I was very pleased with the funcionality of the blogging engine in general.

It was nice to have them all setup their own accounts, so I didn’t have to manually do it, and then turn off registration so I didn’t have any leaches on it. The customization was HUGE for the kids. They had all sorts of personal images in their sidebars (lots of Yu-Gi-Oh!), custom colors, which were hard on the eyes, but it was nice to have a closed system for me to keep track of comments and posts. It was especially nice to be able to have all innapropriate comments sent to me first, before they were made live.

The commenting system is a little wonky, with students having to navigate to the original post in their dashboard in order to approve or delete comments on it (thought that was a bit unintuitive after using wordpress). Otherwise it’s a great tool.

No offense to Will Richardson, as I respect his judgement when it comes to the read/write web, but why wouldn’t a company like 21Publish get some classroom teachers to evaluate it for them, since they are the target audience. I know Will taught for a very long time, but a couple years on the lecture circuit can greatly change your perspective. Just a hint the next time Discovery needs you to find someone to trial a new piece of software or service (teachers LOVE hearing from the visionaries and what they thin, but we really want to know what the “average joe” teacher thinks about it).

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