Rollover of Individual Blogs

Blog Rollover - Workflow

Step by step to transitioning the student individual blogs at the end of the academic year to their new class/teacher.

Stage One

Getting Organised

Get all the documentation sorted BEFORE starting the rollover process so it happens in a methodical fashion

1. Class Lists for new academic year have been confirmed

2. Open the Master ‘Blogs’ spreadsheet which contains all the details of the student individual blogs

3. Locate the most recent sheet eg 2012, and Duplicate the sheet

4. Rename the sheet eg it may be called “Copy of 2012”, Rename 2013

5. Locate all the students who have LEFT the school

6. CUT and paste their line in the spreadsheet into a different sheet eg Alumni

   1. You will need to create this ‘Alumni’ or simply ‘Left” sheet if you haven’t already

7. On the new year sheet, add a new column eg 2013

8. Input the data for the new year ie class number or code

• 1. In some schools (small schools) it will be easy as the whole class may simply move as a group and inputting the data will be very quick

  2. Where the students get remixed into different groupings/classes this will be quite a slow and detailed process, requiring individual checking with the new class lists. I have found this easier to do with a partner - one doing the searching and calling out the other data inputs

9. When you are confident this is ready to go, View >Freeze> Row 1 (or however many rows have header information) and Sort the students using the Column of the new class year

10. All is organised and ready to begin the roll-over

Stage Two

Passing on a class set of blogs to the new teacher(s)

This really should be done by the teacher who taught the class in the PREVIOUS academic year.

Why?

• The Master Blog Admin account has 100 blogs and kids who have been blogging 2-3 yrs+ are scattered across multiple of these accounts. So it is a HUGE job for an Admin person to do.

• Whereas, a classroom teacher ‘only’ has 30 to do and they are all under the one account and much more seamless to do

It is best done when all the class teachers involved are in one place eg a staff meeting

Why?

Because if the new teacher does not accept the invitation quickly the invitation will expire and you have to do it all AGAIN - not fun!

When they have accepted all the invitations to Author the new class set of blogs, they can notify the previous teacher and have themselves promoted to Admin quickly and efficiently

Workflow for transferring ownership of student individual blogs:

1. Have a print out or screen open displaying last year’s class list with the class(es) for the current new year alongside

2. Have a simple text document with the email address(es) of the teacher(s) for the new year typed accurately

3. Open your Blogger Dashboard ready to work through the students methodically

4. On the Blog of the first student on the Dashboard go to Settings> Basic > Permissions >Add Authors

5. Copy and paste the email of the new teacher into this dialogue box > Click “Invite Authors”

6. Repeat this with all the student blogs

7. Ask the new teacher(s) to check their email and accept those invitations quickly - preferably on the spot if you are in the same room.

8. When they tell you this has been done, you go back into the Settings> Basic > Permissions and you will see the new teacher has been added to the Blog and has a box saying “Author” on the right hand side of their name. You click that and change their status to Admin.

9. At this stage the student blog now has THREE Admin owners: the Master Blog owning account, the teacher from last year and the new teacher.

10. The next step is to go back through the blogs and REMOVE your own email address from the Settings> Mobile and Email page, paste in the email address of the new teacher in two places; posts and comments >save settings

11. Finally you remove yourself from the Blog by going to: Settings > Basic > Permissions and click the X on the right hand side of your name.

12. When that is saved you no longer have access to this blog. It is officially in the hands of the new owner.

Stage Three

Updating information on the new set of blogs

The classroom teacher has just been made Admin of a whole new set of student blogs.

What needs to be done to them?

1. Update the ‘About Me’ - the most common way to do this is to get the students to write a paragraph on a Google Doc, then the teacher copy and paste into the gadget on the sidebar.

2. Configure the Header; Layout > Edit the header > Under Configure paste in a generic statement ie easiest to write one statement and copy/paste onto each blog

You may decide to go further and do these things

1. Get each student to create personalised graphics / backgrounds for their blog

2. Take an up-to-date photo of themself to post in the sidebar

Stage Four

Publicity

Spreading the word about the children’s blogs is an important way of supporting their learning. Here are some suggestions

1. Use your class blog as a portal to their blogs. So add a blogroll widget on the sidebar and add all the class blogs. That way you will always see the most recent posts rise to the top of the list.

2. Make sure links on your school website are updated - or prompt the tech person to get on and do it