#ClusterBlogging: A Conected Blogging Community for Teachers and Students
There are so many teachers and students blogging, but even so I find myself struggling to get any consistent traffic to my students' sites. Even more, traffic that will leave actual comments. When considering my options for connecting with other classrooms, I realized I had no shortage of bloggers out there, but coordinating common time was a different story. So, if there are classrooms that are blogging all the time.. the missing link isn't blogging, it’s a consistent audience!
And so we have....
Cluster Blogging!
Cluster Blogging is inspired as an extension of Quad Blogging, which works where groups of four classrooms come together to share the blogging experience over a given period of time. Within this time frame, there are classrooms that post material while the others leave comments. The hope for cluster blogging is to put more of a focus on sharing and commenting over a longer period of time, and at your leisure. Providing opportunities to visit and revisit over the course of the year.
My hope, is that all participants will also take advantage of SKYPE CLASSROOM and combine the blogging experience with at least one Skype or Google Hangout session towards the end, or at multiple checkpoints! Give the students an opportunity to come face to face, and either chat about their blogs or what they'd like to do moving forward!
Whether you consider yourself an active or passive , eager or experimental classroom blogger, why stop at connecting with 4? For classrooms that aren't as structured or consistent, or even for those that are constantly adding to their newsfeeds, the idea behind cluster blogging is to write for the universal audience: pulling all of these wondrous bloggers (and quad-bloggers) to one place where they view, comment, and learn at their leisure!
If 100 students take the blogging challenge, imagine the stories and experiences they will have to explore! Instead of gravitating towards the same blog, they all reach to their own interests and come back with treasure to share.
Cluster Blogging is about creating a known community of student bloggers. You can use this site to track which classes are “actively” blogging, and which are only blogging some of the time. If you aren't actively blogging, use that time to spread out and explore, leaving comments for other students who are. At any point, any class can contribute to the dialogue, with the idea being for as many students to reach as many blogs as they can.
If we are all already blogging without the cluster connection, then all we've done is open the door for more opportunity!