My favorite first grade teacher finally has a blog. I was talking with her about it a couple weeks ago, and it was interesting to hear why she wanted to blog. Her school district provides a web site creation tool. They can easily put announcements, homework, classroom rules, and schedule information online. They can choose the neat animated graphics that elementary schools seem to love. But that site didn’t meet her needs.

She likes WordPress for two reasons. First, it’s easy to get information online. Click write. Type what you have to say. Click publish. That’s all you have to do. She also likes the theme choices. Just because it’s a site for an elementary class, doesn’t mean it has to have a distracting or juvenile theme. She ended up picking something that’s definitely not first grade. But it fits her personality.

The blog came with added benefits, too. When she’s ready, she can have her students writing and commenting on her blog. She wouldn’t be the only first grade class doing this. She can also easily offer RSS feeds and email notification for parents. They can sign up and get the content emailed to them automatically whenever she posts it. She can’t do any of those things with the tool her district provides.

Do you want to be a teacher-blogger too? If you’re a BBH teacher, start here. If you’re not, head over to Edublogs or WordPress to get started.