Communicating Expectations

When you're ready to get classes actively involved, it will be important to share "ground rules" with students and parents upfront. Depending on how popular blogs are in your school, you may also want to include your administrators.

I'll provide a few models to consider, though you'll undoubtedly want to customize something to your particular audience.

• When I first started blogging, I created this packet with basic instructions, expectations, and a letter for parents to sign off on.
  
• The Horizon Project (an extension of the Flat Classroom Project Rick mentioned to us last time!) has a different (and very cool) approach in their Student Code of Ethics. This is a wiki project, but most of the same web etiquette and basic common sense applies.
  
• Here's a nice sample letter from teacher Bud Hunt's site (referenced in Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts). He has some other interesting resources here, though you have to do a bit of digging around. One suggestion was to have students develop their own "handbook" for blogging ... you can see some of the results here.
• The article we read for homework, “Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instructional Blog,” also had some samples at the end.
  

What is most appropriate for your students?