Blogging with young children

My interest in blogging started when I set up a blog for my kindergarten earlier this year. From an ICT symposium facilitated by the Core Education,  I learnt that using ICT in the early childhood programme is the way to recognize and acknowledge the ICT experiences children are having at home. With an aim to 'make learning visible to our families ', the kindergarten decided to have its own blog. We are aware that some other kindergartens have great sucess in communicating learning with parents and their extended families overseas through blogging,  and similarly my kindergarten community reflects a diversity of cultures, probably the blog will become an effective forum for the teachers to share the learning happening at kindy; and equally important, families will be able to give us feedback, share their views, add a different perspectives, and enrich the teaching and learning experiences.

The path to launch the blog has not been smooth. We organized a parents' evening to explain the reasons to have a blog and how to read and make comments. Despite the turnout rate was low, the parents who participated gave use huge support, so we determined to go ahead. As parents are a bit concerned about opening up the blog, we agreed to have a closed blog, and the kindergarten will invite only families to our blog. As we have chosen to use Blogger, which requires a Gmail account to read the blog; the response from the parents has been disappointing. Even though it's free to open a Gmail account, few parents took the time to do it. We've launched our blog for over 10 months, and only 15% of our families are reading and commenting on our blog. Are the families really so busy that they don't bother to acquire a Gmail? So, recently, we relaunch the blog and switch to WordPress. See how it will go!

Another strategy I suggested is to put the child's voice on the blog. I will regularly compose a post with the children and then send a personal invitation to their parent to go to the blog. Hopefully, the parents will develop a habit of reading the blog. I'll talk about the value of blogging with children next time.