Protecting your (young) learners' privacy
If you're teaching young learners, it's absolutely vital that you protect their privacy, don't give away their emails etc.
No, you don't want your blog listed!
If you have set up your blog at Blogger, the first thing to alter is the default "Yes" marked (1), above. Having no links (listing) pointing to you will make your blog much harder to find, which makes this a vital step.
If you're using something other than Blogger, you'll want to take similar steps.
Determine who can comment... Under "Settings" > "Comments"
You want to change who can comment. The default "only registered users" (2, above) in fact includes anyone with a Blogger account -- which includes an awful lot of people desperate to sell you sex toys and Viagra (etc). Your alternatives are "anyone" (no, thanks!) or "only members of this blog" -- neither of which are ideal.
Assuming that you have made all your learners members (under "Settings" > "Permissions", see below), you want that third option.
Alternatively, if you did say "no" to "listing" your blog (see above), choose "anyone".
Mail posts to yourself
Under "Settings" > "Email", you can enter an email address (3, above), like your own, which means that any posts on the blog get mailed to you. That's worth doing if your learners are going to post to the same "team" blog; you thus get alerted by mail to new posts (and to any undesirable posts).
Who can read your blog...?
By default "Anyone" can read your blog. Change that to "only blog authors" (4, above) and only you and your students can do so (assuming that you have made them "authors" that is).
If you were the sole author, writing for your students, selecting "only people I choose" would limit your audience to the class (and would require log in, as you can see above.)
Protect your profile, too
From the top right hand side of your screen, you can access your "dashboard", which allows you to manage your blog (or blogs, if you have more than one), and to edit your profile.
The default settings for your profile are shown below:
You don't want young learners to share their profile with the world (5, above), so click that off; you don't want their names published (6), leave that as it is; and -- vitally -- you don't want to reveal their email accounts (7), so leave that too.
And finally...
With young learners, you should also obtain the school's permission to blog, and (written, signed) permission from the parents.
No, you don't want your blog listed!If you have set up your blog at Blogger, the first thing to alter is the default "Yes" marked (1), above. Having no links (listing) pointing to you will make your blog much harder to find, which makes this a vital step.
If you're using something other than Blogger, you'll want to take similar steps.
Determine who can comment... Under "Settings" > "Comments"You want to change who can comment. The default "only registered users" (2, above) in fact includes anyone with a Blogger account -- which includes an awful lot of people desperate to sell you sex toys and Viagra (etc). Your alternatives are "anyone" (no, thanks!) or "only members of this blog" -- neither of which are ideal.
Assuming that you have made all your learners members (under "Settings" > "Permissions", see below), you want that third option.
Alternatively, if you did say "no" to "listing" your blog (see above), choose "anyone".
Mail posts to yourselfUnder "Settings" > "Email", you can enter an email address (3, above), like your own, which means that any posts on the blog get mailed to you. That's worth doing if your learners are going to post to the same "team" blog; you thus get alerted by mail to new posts (and to any undesirable posts).
Who can read your blog...?By default "Anyone" can read your blog. Change that to "only blog authors" (4, above) and only you and your students can do so (assuming that you have made them "authors" that is).
If you were the sole author, writing for your students, selecting "only people I choose" would limit your audience to the class (and would require log in, as you can see above.)
Protect your profile, too
From the top right hand side of your screen, you can access your "dashboard", which allows you to manage your blog (or blogs, if you have more than one), and to edit your profile.
The default settings for your profile are shown below:
You don't want young learners to share their profile with the world (5, above), so click that off; you don't want their names published (6), leave that as it is; and -- vitally -- you don't want to reveal their email accounts (7), so leave that too.And finally...
With young learners, you should also obtain the school's permission to blog, and (written, signed) permission from the parents.
Labels: Blogging
posted by Tom at 9:04 AM
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1 Comments:
If you are worried that your learners might write inappropriate comments, you also have a feature known as "comment moderation", which means that all comments come to you first for approval.
You then choose to publish or reject.
To enable comment moderation with Blogger, go to Settings > Comments, and pick "Yes" for comment moderation and add an email address.
Note that you can also choose "comment motification", which means that you don't approve or reject, but get an email containing any comments published... which you can then delete if you wish to.
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