Lots of schools have a blog these days. But a school blog is difficult to keep up-to-date and interesting, and even just keeping up with the writing can be hard work. And unfortunately, there's nothing that is much worse on a school website than to see the words "Last updated on...", followed by a date of three months ago.
One way to try to insure against that happening, and also of keeping the blog vibrant, is to form a blogging team. Now, you may be thinking that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, but if so then try thinking of the proverb "many hands make light work"!
With a blogging team, you could do the following:
- Work on a publication calendar. For example, you might say that in September you'll have blog posts about starting the new school year. All you have to do is look at the school calendar for the year, and work your blog posts around that.
- Give each member of the team the job of updating the blog every day for one week. The Society of Authors did that once, and it worked really well. Thinking about writing something every day for a week is much less daunting than wondering what you're going to write over the next school year.
- Involve pupils. There is no reason that pupils can't contribute. Just as some schools have Digital Leaders, why not have a team of Blogging Leaders?
- Involve classes. I worked in a school once where every class had to take the assembly for one morning a year. Why not extend that idea to blogging, and say that each class has to contribute to the school blog once a year?
- Come up with good ideas for blog-worthy topics.
- Identify pupils (and teachers!) who love writing and are good at it.
- Identify pupils who may not be great writers or spellers, but take great photos that can be used to illustrate articles.
If you like the idea of having a school blog, but find the prospect too daunting for comfort, perhaps forming a blogging team is exactly the right thing to do.
Terry Freedman writes about educational Computing, and other topics, on his website ICT & Computing in Education, and his newsletter, Digital Education.
