Sept. 7, 2021
Each month we will be highlighting a #MashoftheMonth, this will focus on a tool or application within Purple Mash and how it can be used within the classroom to support learning across the curriculum. During the month, if you share how you have used #MashoftheMonth, you will then be entered into a draw to win a 2Simple Goody Bag!
This September the Mash of the Month is the recently updated safe blogging tool 2Blog.
2Blog is a powerful and versatile way of setting up Blogs for classes, groups and individuals within your school. It was used extensively during lockdown and listening to your feedback we updated the features to ensure that you and your students have the best experience, you can read about the latest updates including the ability to attach multiple items, scheduling blog posts and recording sound with blog posts here.
The main way that we have seen blogs being used by schools is to set up whole school and class blogs. This is a great way of showcasing all the excellent work happening in your classroom and enables you to share this work with the wider school community. Blogs can either be set as private or public – it is up to you as the teacher how visible you would like the blogs to be. If your staff are new to blogging, there is a great course within our training platform that covers sharing online work as well as a 2Blog guide that covers all you need to get started with 2Blog within school.
Over the last year, we have loved hearing how schools have been making use of 2Blog within their environment. Wentworth College posts their daily home learning, including attached documents and embedded videos. Last week they magnificently used 2Blog for their virtual Zoo trip! Wallan Primary set up blogs for their students with daily and weekly tasks for the students to complete. The blogs are not public and have been set to be viewed only by the children and parents of their school using their logins.
St Paul of the Cross school set up a Whole School Reading blog, where children can upload the books that they are reading at home, with reviews of what they have read.
Wheatfields Junior School also did something similar and their whole school blog was really positive, as both teachers and children were inspired by the children’s achievements, both in their own year groups and other year groups. Every class also has their own reading blogs. In Year 6, the children are set daily challenges, share book reviews and have a mindfulness blog.
Quarry Hill Academy has also set up a Birthday blog so that children in different year groups can celebrate birthdays that happen within their class and leave messages. Our Lady Queen of Peace Primary School even used the blog to set up a quiz for their families on 2Blog. 30 questions split into 3 rounds all about their school, asking families to post their scores as a bit of family fun and a reminder of the school.
These are just some of the creative ways that you can use 2Blog as a school. Some other ideas include setting up the following:
Within 2Blog, students can also create their own blogs, which is a great way for them to share their passions or interest both inside and outside school. They may want to set up a Gaming blog, one that covers their favourite sport or a hobby that they do. Child Blogs are not made visible to anyone other than the creating child and their teacher unless the teacher sets the blog to viewable to others.