Our Blogging Covenant

Children:

• We will only use FIRST names when writing about other children. We will use our "blogging display name" when writing about ourselves. We may use last names for adults such as teachers, parents, coaches, etc. We should only use names when we think it is important to our story.
  

• We will only use SENSIBLE, KIND, and RESPECTFUL words in our posts and in our comments.
  

• We will not write any of our DETAILS - this includes phone numbers, address,or personal email address.

• We will be careful when putting PHOTOS on by only using nice photos of other people and by asking PERMISSION when putting on other people's photos.

• We will give CREDIT for other people's words, artwork, videos, ideas, or photos.

• If we are reading, writing, and spelling well, we will try our hardest to get our SPELLING right, and we will read over what we write before we post. We will ask our parents for help with posting.
  

• We will be RESPONSIBLE when using and writing on our blog.

• We will ask QUESTIONS when we need help or answers.

These guidelines are borrowed and slightly modified from Rachel Boyd's classroom blog rules seen here. Thank you, Ms. Boyd, for thinking through these issues, so clearly articulating them, and for your inspiring work with children in New Zealand.

Parents:

• I will HELP my child/children post to this blog, and I will MONITOR their posting and commenting activity. I will Be CAREFUL to make sure we are following the community guidelines.
  

• I will ENCOURAGE my child/children to read posts by other community members, to reflect, and to comment when appropriate. I will also make comments on posts when I am interested or have questions, thoughts, suggestions.
  

• I will STRIVE to help my child/children POST at least twice per month.

• I will READ and REVIEW these Blogging Safety Tips for Parents and Kids from Microsoft.
  

Administrator/moderator:

• As an author, you will be the only person who can edit your posts. Other people can only comment on posts you have written. I will not change or edit your posts unless you ask for my help. If I see something that needs to be changed for an important reason, I will contact the author to ask permission. I will delete a post if it is unkind or inappropriate for this blog (of course, I don't expect this to happen).
  

• I will read all comments before they are added to the blog. I will not post comments that are unkind or inappropriate (not that I expect this to happen, either). Comments by blog authors do not have to be reviewed by the moderator.
  

• I may add LABELS to your posts.

What are LABELS?

When we post, we can assign labels for the post. It is at the bottom of the text box on the "Posting screen." If you click on the "show all" link, you will see what labels have already been used by other members of the blog, and you may choose one of these if it applies. For example, Flower Power wrote about things that happened at school in her first post. If you write about school, you may want to use the label "at school" on your post, too, so that readers of the blog can easily find all posts about "at school" if they are interested in this topic. If you write about soccer, and you don't see a label for soccer, you may want to create a new label by just typing it into the "Label box." When we use labels, we create an index for our blog (or a keyword catalog). So, we want to identify our posts by their main content through labels.

We also want to identify posts by our "blogging display name." This way, readers of the blog can easily find all posts by a certain author. If your display name is "Light Saber," always put this label on your posts.

Now, I'm getting out of the way so that the real authors of this blog can do some posting!

If you have other suggestions for our community guidelines or questions about them, please comment!