We’ve set up a Getting Started With Edublogs page on this blog to provide a central location for “how to” resources. Please let us know if you have any resources to add to this page.

Meantime we receive many requests for tips on blogging with students so here is some advice from educators who are experienced with using blogs in their classrooms.

Using Blogs With Students

Al Upton’s advice to educators new to using blogs is to start first with a class blog and move toward students posting about their own learning on their own blogs when they feel comfortable.

Kim Cofino says “One of my biggest stumbling blocks, as I’ve switched gears from middle to elementary school, is individual e-mail accounts for the students“. Her solution is Gmail allows you to create subsidiary accounts that link to an individual account which means that one teacher can have permanent e-mail accounts for all students delivered into one teacher e-mail account.

Here are Kim Confino’s tips for setting up students as Contributors on Edublogs – the quick and easy way so that:

• Individual students have log-ins WITHOUT individual e-mail accounts
• Individual student contributors to the blog WITHOUT their blog
• All posts are approved by the blog administrator before posting.

Parental consent is an aspect that needs to be considered. Clay Burell uses a Parents Consent For Student Weblog Letter to inform parents of the aims of using blogs and let parents choose the level of privacy – name, image in photos or videos, comment moderation – for their child.

Susan Morgan shares her conversation with Matt, one of her students, on how his classes were going, specifically regarding the use of technology. Here’s an extract from Susan’s post:

Well, I wish teachers wouldn’t assign stuff for no reason. It seems that they are just adding on technology projects on top of the other things we already do.

“He senses from some teachers that they feel they have to “do” technology, not that they want to. His biggest criticism is the way we blog. A teacher posts a question, and the student writes a nightly response to it, much like he would do in a reading log or journal. He said there’s not much follow-up to the posting, either by students or teachers.

What Matt wishes is that his teachers would consider using blogs or forums to extend his learning.

Konrad Glogowski’s Blog of Proximal Development shares a variety of tips for blogging with students such as Replacing Grading With Conversations, Making Assessments More Personally Relevant, How to Grow a Blog and Towards Reflective BlogTalk.

Konrad wants his students:

to see their blogs and their entries as organic entities, as attempts to engage with ideas, as evidence of growth and development. It’s about maintaining conversations, not ending them by saying “Well done!” or “Good job!”

When it comes to incorporating blogging into the classroom, there are a few key tips to keep in mind.  Blogging can be a powerful tool for students to develop their writing skills, share their thoughts and ideas, and engage in meaningful discussions with their peers. 

Here are some tips for effectively integrating blogging into your classroom:

i) Establish clear guidelines

Before introducing blogging to your students, it’s important to establish clear guidelines and expectations. This can include guidelines for appropriate language, respectful dialogue, and citation of sources. By setting clear expectations from the start, you can create a positive and respectful online environment for your students.

ii) Provide feedback

Just as you would with traditional writing assignments, it’s important to provide constructive feedback on students’ blog posts. Encourage students to revise and edit their work based on your feedback, and guide how they can improve their writing skills.

iii) Encourage interaction

One of the key benefits of blogging is the opportunity for students to engage in meaningful discussions with their peers. Encourage students to comment on each other’s blog posts, ask questions, and provide feedback. This can help foster a sense of community within the classroom and encourage peer-to-peer learning.

iv) Use prompts

Some students may find it challenging to come up with ideas for their blog posts. Writing prompts can help them get started and inspire them to explore new topics. Prompts can be related to the curriculum or open-ended to allow students to express their creativity.

v) Incorporate multimedia

Encourage students to incorporate multimedia elements such as images, videos, and infographics into their blog posts to make them more engaging and visually appealing.

vi) Foster a supportive environment

Create an inclusive environment where students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. Encourage respectful dialogue and open-mindedness.

By following these tips, educators can effectively leverage blogging as a tool to enhance students’ writing and critical thinking skills, while also fostering a sense of community within the classroom.

Final Thoughts

What is your advice to educators starting out blogging with students? What has worked? What has caused problems? Can you recommend other posts that educators should read on this topic?

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Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the growing expectations placed on today’s educators? Feel like there’s never enough time to build a strong rapport with your community while delivering a rich, modern curriculum? Blogging might help you in more ways than you’d expect!

Blogs have become a well-established part of the online landscape over the past decade. The educational blogging community continues to grow at a rapid pace — evidenced by the over four million blogs on Edublogs, and countless more across other platforms.

You may have no blogging experience at all, or you may have tried it before. Whatever your background, now is a great time to consider starting a new blog.

Here are ten reasons to integrate blogging into your classroom or professional practice — and make sure you read to the very end for a summary infographic you can share!

1. Home-School Connections:

Many teachers establish a class blog as a ‘virtual window into the classroom’. This was my primary purpose for beginning a blog back in 2008 before other advantages and uses became apparent.

Through reading and commenting on posts, families can be a part of what is happening in the classroom and have unmatched access to their child’s education.

Research shows that parent engagement is associated with improvements across a number of areas such as educational outcomes, behaviour and school attendance. Participating virtually now tends to suit many parents who are juggling careers and other demands. This is something that can be actively capitalized on through a classroom blogging program.

It is important to remember that most parents are busy people who need education and ongoing invitations to participate. As a teacher, I certainly found that actively encouraging parent participation in blogging was something that paid off. You may consider offering your parents: handouts, video tutorials, family blogging events, parent information evenings, commenting challenges or email newsletters.

2. Authentic Audiences:

In the traditional classroom, the only audience for student work was the teacher and sometimes classmates and parents. Blogs provide a much larger audience for student work and an avenue for feedback and self-improvement through commenting.

I found that students took particular pride when publishing work for our blog and often wanted to do their best for their impending audience. When we establish an authentic audience for our students we help them connect their classwork to the real world. After all, isn’t that what education is supposed to be about?

3. Literacy Skills:

With a class or individual blog, students are reading and writing for a purpose and genuine audience. Unlike other approaches to teaching literacy, where you may study a genre or style for a few weeks, blogging can be an ongoing occurrence in the classroom.

When high standards are set, and explicit teaching is embedded, a blogging program can be a powerful catalyst to improved literacy skills.

If we want our students to be motivated to use their emerging writing skills, we have to make writing purposeful, challenging, and real-to-life. Blogging offers this.

Traditional literacy skills are also no longer enough for our students. As innovative educator Silvia Tolisano points out, there are now many types of 21st literacies including: digital, media, visual and global literacies. A classroom blogging program can help integrate these literacies into your classroom seamlessly.

4. Classroom Community:

Creating a class blog requires teamwork and collaboration. Students and teachers can learn and share together. The Edublogs’ student and teacher challenges can be a great place to start this learning process.

A real sense of classroom community can be developed through blogging and establishing a class identity. Even if teachers are initially writing posts, students can take on roles and responsibilities such as capturing images, creating multimedia or replying to comments. A class blog mascot can also be a fun way to represent your classroom community.

5. Internet Safety:

Teaching students to be safe and responsible online is an increasingly important issue. Effective internet safety education does not involve one off lessons. This is a notion supported by the experts at Connect Safely who say internet safety concepts should be woven into the curriculum. They point out that students don’t distinguish between their digital lives and their personal lives, and there is a lot of power in using ‘teachable moments’ just as you would with any subject matter.

A classroom blogging program offers ongoing opportunities to discuss internet safety and appropriate online behaviours in an authentic setting. Blogging is an excellent way to learn about being a responsible member of an online community, digital footprints, netiquette, making safe choices and more. As Connect Safely identify, the key messages educators need to teach are: ‘think before you post’ and ‘be kind and respectful’. There is amazing potential to use blogging to promote these exact messages.

Using a platform like Edublogs offers you a lot of freedom to select the privacy settings that you and your community are comfortable with.

6. ICT Skills:

It can be easy to assume that students are ‘digital natives’ and come to school already equipped with a broad range of ICT skills. A review paper published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education found that “information-savvy digital natives do not exist”.

Becoming an effective and fluent user of information technology requires explicit teaching and practice. Through blogging, many skills are able to be discussed and practised, often incidentally. These can range from keyboard shortcuts, coding, Creative Commons, research skills, using multimedia, troubleshooting and a lot more. Again, these learnings are all for an authentic purpose rather than through skill and drill exercises.

7.Global Connections:

I have found this to be one of the most exciting benefits of blogging for both teachers and students. Blogging can help flatten classroom walls like no other tool.

Over my years of blogging, my students and I got to know many classes across the world who we called our ‘blogging buddies’.

The benefits of global connections are priceless. A sense of understanding and tolerance develops and students can learn a lot about the world in which they live. Blogging partnerships allowed my students to learn from and with their global classmates about topics such as geography, cultures, time zones, seasons, language, internet safety and more.

When blogging is established in your classroom, there is also the possibility to organise or join in structured global projects. The opportunities and potential outcomes are endless.

And from a teacher’s perspective, once you become involved in blogging, your professional learning network can rapidly expand to be a lot larger than your school staffroom. You never know who you will meet and what wonderful relationships you can form!

8. Personal Development:

The process of blogging allows a lot of scope for personal development, for both students and teachers. Blogging offers reinforcement and feedback through comments beyond the immediate classroom community. This can drive self-esteem, personal reflection and growth, as well as confidence. Students and/or teachers may realize they have something important to say, and blogging may encourage individuals to speak their mind, reflect deeply and share their understandings.

Blogging is also a fantastic creative outlet. Whether it’s writing, designing your blog layout, or using photography, video, podcasts or other multimedia tools, blogs offer so much scope for creativity and fun. Blogs can also be used to showcase creative pursuits in art, music, sport, science or any other field.

A blogging program can also help to foster individual talents and passions while driving creativity and personal growth.

9. Lifelong Learning:

Blogging can be an excellent meta-cognitive process and avenue for reflection. The process of creating blog posts, allows you to ‘think about what you think’ and put those thoughts into words. Through delving into my thoughts on topics, and writing about what was happening in my classroom, I often came up with new ideas and strategies to use in my teaching. Additionally, when others offer thoughts and opinions on blog posts, you can be introduced to new perspectives that drive further reflection.

Effective teaching and learning does not occur in a vacuum, and establishing a broad network of global educators is priceless. It’s hard to believe that the majority of teachers are still relying on the insights of their immediate team or school when there are billions of people out there who can broaden their horizons!

Whatever position we are in, we must take advantage of the tools we now have for connecting beyond our immediate surrounds.

10. Blogging is versatile … and free!

What is a blog? It’s anything you want it to be really. It’s like asking ‘what is a classroom?’ We all know a classroom can be indoors, outdoors, in rows, in circles, big, small or even flipped. A blog is merely a website that can be customized to meet your individual requirements.

Blogs offer you the versatility to create a unique online space to represent yourself and/or your students and community. Unlike some online tools, blogging is completely free yet the potential uses and advantages are incomparable.

What Now?

You may be convinced, but what about your school leadership team or community? This post may help you to persuade them that it would be doing your students a disservice to not expose them to all the advantages that blogging offers.

Be sure to check out the infographic summary of this post too!

If you’re ready to start setting up a blog, click here. If the Edublogs team can help with any other questions about blogging, simply leave a comment or contact us on our help and support page.

New To Blogging?

There are so many benefits to having a class blog! A class blog can a virtual space that complements a physical learning environment for all age groups.

If you don’t know anything about blogging, don’t worry! We have a free self-paced course for teachers that walks you step-by-step through the process of setting up a class blog and blogging with students.

You can even join our 30 Day Challenge at any time to complete the 11 step course over a period of one month.

In this post, we’ll show you 10 ways you can introduce your class to blogging. Be sure to share any of your own ideas or experiences in a comment!

1) Introductory Video

If your students are new to blogging (or need a refresher) you might want to start by showing them this short video.

The video goes through the terminology of blogging and explains how blogs are used. For a simple follow-up activity, check out this blogging vocabulary crossword.

2) Kahoot!

Have you caught on to the Kahoot! craze? It’s a free tool that allows you to create and play engaging learning games (called Kahoots).

The multiple-choice questions appear on the screen in the classroom and students submit their responses in real time using their computer, tablet, or mobile device. Students can work in teams and can work for points (most correct answers and quickest responses).

It’s a lot of fun!

We’ve made an Introduction To Blogging Kahoot. It goes over some of the key terms, vocabulary, and uses of blogs. There are 15 multiple choice questions.

How To Play Our Blogging Kahoot

To access the Kahoot, click on this link.

You don’t need an account to play, however; you will need to log in if you want to edit the quiz (we encourage you to adapt it for your own students if necessary).

You also need to be signed in to save results.

You’ll have the option for your students to play against each other individually (classic mode) or in teams.

You’ll also have a variety of game options you can play around with (see below).

Once you finalize your selections, a game pin number will show up. Students will go to the Kahoot app on their device, or to https://kahoot.it/ and enter the pin number to begin!

3) Blog Exploration

Having your students explore examples of different blogs can help them learn more about blogging and gather ideas.

If you’ve blogged with students in previous years, you might opt for your new cohort to look at former students’ work.

Alternatively, we have a list of class blogs that might be helpful. Check it out here. You might like to simply send students to this list, or handpick a few blogs that you’d like your class to look at specifically.

The blog exploration could be a whole class exercise or students could work in small groups.

You may like to prompt students with a series of questions you’d like them to take note on, such as:

• What is the writing style like on the blog — casual, formal, academic?
• What safety or blogging guidelines can you find on the blog?
• How are pages used for static information?
• Are the posts time specific or ‘evergreen’?
• What images and multimedia are being used?
• Is there a sidebar? What is its purpose?
• How has the text been formatted to make it easier to read — are there headings, bullet points, or colors etc?
• How does digital writing differ from analog with hyperlinks etc?

This exploration can lead to a valuable classroom discussion; students could share ideas and examples that they could bring to your own class blog.

4) Paper Blogging

Paper blogging is a concept that has been going around for years. It can make the abstract concept of blogging really concrete for students.

These are the basic steps you’d follow to try paper blogging:

• Have students handwrite a blog post on paper (make it simple, like a hobby or recount of something that happened at school).
• Put paper blog posts on walls or around the room for everyone to read.
• Using sticky notes, all the other students can comment on the paper blog posts.
• You can have discussions about what makes a great comment and how blogging can create a community in your classroom.

5) Safety Guidelines

It’s a good idea to discuss or inform students of your safety guidelines for your blog ASAP.

As students are exploring other blogs, you might have them look at safety guidelines to see what information is being published. Have them consider what information might be kept private? What are they not seeing?

The visual below might provide some useful reminders or discussion starters. While there are many things that definitely shouldn’t be shared in your blog posts and comments (YAPPY), there are some grey areas.

Students should be encouraged to think before they post and always discuss anything they’re unsure about with an adult before posting.

6) Begin With The Teacher Posting

Having the teacher publish posts first, and having the students comment can be a really good way to set the scene for a quality blogging program. It gives you the opportunity to teach the students explicitly about quality commenting while helping them learn the basics of blogging.

Even if you want students to be publishing posts down the track, strongly consider having the teacher publish first. This could even be an introductory post where students can practice leaving quality comments to introduce themselves and answer comments.

Having the teacher post and students comment might be the model you continue with for the whole year, or after a post or two, you might have students post on the class blog, or on their own blogs. Often, this depends on age and experience as well.

Many teachers like to give a gradual release of responsibility as demonstrated in the graphic below.

*Note the option for students to ‘earn a blog’ is something some teachers try if they’re just starting out, teach young children, or face obstacles like limited technology.

Some teachers also have a selected group of interested students set up a blog — perhaps in the style of a ‘blogging club’. This leads to our next idea…

7) Have Students Lead

Teachers don’t have to be the expert when it comes to setting up your blogging program. While you’ll definitely want to keep an eye on things, especially in terms of what’s being published and your safety guidelines, you can have students help other students learn about blogging.

Perhaps you could have a small group of students dedicate some time to learning about blogging (perhaps through the Student Blogging Bootcamp — see below).

Your ‘tech-perts’ could then come up with some activities to introduce the rest of the class to the blog. I’ve even heard of students in classes setting up ‘online courses’ for other students in their class!

8) Student Blogging Bootcamp

If you’re interested in assigning your students a self-paced course which walks them through the process of setting up their own blog, check out our free Student Blogging Bootcamp.

There are 10 steps in the course. You could assign students one step per period, or let them work through the whole series at their own pace. Alternatively, you could pick and choose and just assign students a handful of the steps.

Have a look through the course and see what would work for your class!

9) Student Blogging Challenge

Every March and September, the 8 week Student Blogging Challenge is held.

The challenge is made up of a series of 8 weekly tasks all designed to improve blogging and commenting skills while connecting students with a global audience.

The Student Blogging Challenge is totally free and open to students or classes from all over the world, using any blogging platform. It’s most suitable for students between the ages of 8-16.

The next challenge begins October 6, 2019. Find out more by exploring the Student Blogging Challenge website. Registrations will open in September.

10) Involve Families

One of the many benefits of having a class blog is the strengthening of home-school relationships. It’s never too soon in the school year to start involving families. Families and students can learn about blogging together!

Long time blogger Linda Yollis has found the first posts of the school year can be ideal for connecting with families and students.

Check out Linda’s Welcome Back 2018-2019 post. It includes a personal video message and an invitation for students and parents to comment together.

There were many rich commenting conversations between members of the classroom community. What a great way to learn!

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to educate and involve families in your blogging program, check out Step Six of our Blogging With Students Teacher Challenge.

You’re probably familiar with the range of free, web-based tools offered by Google within its Google Drive service?

These tools include Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms, and Google Slides. They’ve become staples in classrooms, homes, and businesses around the world.

For teachers and students, Google Slides is one of the most exciting and versatile tools on offer.

Maybe you’ve heard of Google Slides and you’re wondering how you can use it in the classroom?

Or perhaps, you’ve dabbled with Google Slides but you’re not sure exactly how it can be used beyond presentations?

Or are you a blogger wondering how Google Slides can complement your blog posts?

This post explains:

What is Google Slides?

How to create a Google Slides presentation

How teachers and students can use Google Slides in the classroom (7 creative examples)

How to embed Google Slides into your blog posts (PDF and video tutorial included)

Using Google Slides in Remote Learning

What is Google Slides?

You’re probably familiar with Microsoft PowerPoint — the software used to create and present slideshows?

Google Slides is similar except it’s hosted online and allows for multiple people to collaborate on the same presentation in real time.

Quick facts about Google Slides:

• It’s free.
• You can start with a blank document or use a pre-designed template. 
• It’s available via the web, a mobile app (Android, iOS), and as a desktop application on Google’s ChromeOS.
• PowerPoint files can be imported into Google Slides and then edited. Your Google Slides presentations can be exported as a PowerPoint file, PDF, JPEG, PNG and more.
• Images and video can be added to presentations.
• There are many sharing options for your Google Slides presentation. It can be private, you can share it with select people, or you can share it publicly on the web. You can choose whether people can view or edit your presentation.
• If you’re collaborating with others on a Google Slides presentation, you can chat, leave comments, and work simultaneously on the same presentation.
• Your work is automatically saved as you work on your presentation.
• You can present your slides within the platform (View > Present). You can either plug your computer into a screen or use Chromecast or AirPlay to show a live audience. You can also present virtually via Google Hangouts.
• You can add real-time automatic captions when you present in Google Slides. Find out more here.
• There are many add-ons available for Google Slides. These are tools from 3rd party developers to add more functionality to Google Slides. Most add-ons are free but some have paid premium versions. Learn more about add-ons by reading Eric Curts’ post: 9 Awesome Add-ons to Supercharge Google Slides.
• Google Slides presentations can be embedded in blogs and websites.

Here’s a graphic summary of the above. Feel free to share it with colleagues who want to learn more about Google Slides.

How To Create A Google Slides Presentation

You’ll need a Google Account to access Google Slides. There’s a high chance you already have one! This is the same username/password you use for Gmail and other Google Products. You might also have a school Google account.

If you haven’t got a Google account yet, you can sign up here:

https://accounts.google.com/signup

Google Drive is the place where your Google Slides presentations are stored. It’s also one of the ways you can start a new Google Slides presentation.

You access your Google Drive on the web through this URL:

https://drive.google.com

Click on New in the top left-hand corner. Then click on Google Slides and either Blank Presentation or From a template.

Other Ways To Start A New Google Slides Presentation

• You can go straight to your Google Slides collection to view past Slides and create a new one using this URL https://docs.google.com/presentation
• In late 2018, Google introduced some new shortcut URLs to start new Google Slides. You simply type these into your browser to start a new Slides presentation. They are:
  • slide.new
  • slides.new
  • deck.new
  • presentation.new
• You can also start a new Slides presentation in the app (Android | iOS)

Using Google Slides Offline

To access Google Slides when you’re offline or have poor internet connection, first enable offline access in your Drive settings.

• Go to your Google Drive and click the gear icon at the top right corner
• Select Settings > General and select “Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files to this computer” so you can edit offline.
• You can then right-click on any file in your Google Drive and select “Available offline” from the menu (while connected to the internet).
• You’ll need the free Chrome Google Docs Offline extension to access your offline documents.

Check out the full instructions to access Google Slides offline on any device here.

How To Make A Google Slides Presentation

You’ll notice when you start a new Google Slides presentation, using the methods described above, you have the option to build a blank presentation or work from a pre-designed template.

Whatever option you choose, creating your presentation is straightforward.

Here are the basics of creating a Google Slides presentation.

• You add text via text boxes which you can drag around to suit.
• You then insert other elements via “Insert” on the main toolbar. These elements include:
  • images
  • video
  • audio
  • shapes
  • tables
  • charts
  • diagrams
  • word art
  • animations
• Use the + button on the top left to add a new slide
• Right-click on your slide on the left navigation panel to duplicate it (this can be easier than building a slide from scratch). Duplicate is also found under the “Slide” menu.

This diagram shows the basic functions you will use most with Google Slides. Feel free to share it with your students or colleagues.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Learn More About Google Slides

Learn more about getting started with Slides with the Google Workspace Learning Centre. 

“Get started with Slides” is an easy to follow tutorial that’s suitable for both teachers and students.

Video Tutorials: Google Slides Overview

This two-minute video tutorial provides a simple overview of Google Slides basics.

After a more detailed video? Check out David Lee’s 12-minute introduction to Google Slides.

Add Audio To Google Slides

In April 2019, Google began rolling out the ability to add audio to Google Slides presentations. This long-requested function could be very handy for teachers and students.

Audio can be great for reflection, narration, feedback, and all sorts of creative projects.

Want more examples of how audio can enhance Google Slides for teachers and students? Kasey Bell has written a blog post that shares 25 Ways to Use Audio in Google Slides Projects.

Although the ability to add audio is a great new feature, you can’t record audio directly into your Slides presentation.

As Eric Curts explains,

You see, even though we can now add audio to a Google slideshow, there isn’t a simple built-in recording button. Instead you need to record the audio separately with another program, then save it to Drive, and then add it to a slide.

Thankfully, Eric has put together a helpful collection of Free and Easy Audio Recording Tools for Google Slides.

The tools Eric recommends to make audio recordings are:

• ChromeMP3 Recorder from HablaCloud
• Online Voice Recorder
• TwistedWave

You can find out all about this process and how exactly you insert audio into Google Slides in Eric’s blog post, podcast, or video.

Using Google Slides In The Classroom: The Basics

The simplest and most obvious way to use Google Slides is to create a slide deck. That is, a collection of slides put together to form a presentation.

A slide deck is used to support an oral presentation.

There are many times when teachers or students might need a basic slide deck:

• Teachers can create a slide deck to support the lessons they’re presenting to students.
• Students can make a Slides presentation to accompany an oral presentation that’s part of their classwork.
• Students or teachers can create slide decks when they need to showcase learning or share school programs (e.g. information evening, school assembly, parent-teacher night, etc.).
• Teachers can collaborate on a slide deck for a conference or staff meeting presentation.

Apart from these basic uses, there is so much more you can do with Google Slides.

Let’s take a look…

7 Creative Ways To Use Google Slides In The Classroom

Kasey Bell isn’t wrong when she calls Google Slides the Swiss Army knife of Google Workspace. Let’s take a look at some creative ways you could use Google Slides in the classroom.

1) Introduce Your Class

Alethea Vazquez is a teacher who participated in the Student Blogging Challenge with her students a number of times. Her students collaborated on a great Google Slides presentation to introduce themselves on their class blog.

In this post, Alethea explains how she carried out this process. It involved giving students a Slides template that they could edit.

Take a look at the end result. This is perfect for an About page on a class blog.

2) Make Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books that were popular in past decades?

Creating a similar style of “interactive fiction” is a creative way to use Google Slides. It includes a certain amount of planning as teacher Kevin Hodgson explains in this post.

Here’s an example of interactive fiction using Google Slides by Kevin Hodgson. He shared this on his class blog as an example for students.

Tutorials For Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

• Check out this post by Eric Curts for a detailed explanation
• Jake Miller has made a useful GIF to explain the instructions
• This resource from Google explains how to make a collaborative “If-then Adventure Story”

As Kevin Hodgson says,

Most of my students really enjoy this writing, as it is very different from traditional pieces we do, but a few do struggle with the unconventionality of it. That’s OK, too, for what I am trying to show them is that writing is not one form, but many forms and always adaptable.

3) Try Collaborative Storytelling And Research

Two students in Linda Yollis’ third grade class collaborated together on a Google Slides presentation for the Student Blogging Challenge.

They shared their experiences of traveling to London with their own families and included some great research.

4) Compile Individual Slides Into One: Poetry Example

Sometimes you might want students to all contribute one slide to a group presentation.

There are two ways to do this:

• You can start a new Slides presentation and share this template with the class. You would assign a slide number to each student. You just need to make sure students don’t interfere with other students’ slides.
• Or, you can have students create their own new Slides presentation and then share their completed slide with you. You can then compile all slides into one group Slides presentation. These instructions from Erintegration explain how to do this.

5) Share Photos Of Work That’s Not Digital

Google Slides doesn’t have to just be used to share digital work. It can be used to share and present any work students complete in the classroom.

6) Flip Your Classroom: Create A Self Guided Lesson

Google Slides is a great way to help someone work through a lesson, either in a live classroom setting, or in their own time.

You’ve probably heard of the term “flipped classroom”? This is where students can learn content outside of the classroom freeing up face-to-face class time for rich discussions, projects, collaborations and so on.

Teachers can prepare Google Slides presentations that walk students through lessons. Students can work through these presentations at their own pace and in their own time. A similar model can be used for staff professional development.

7) Make Images

Google Slides offers a blank canvas where creations can be download into image formats like JPEG and PNG.

For those reasons, it’s a great way for students and teachers to make images that they can print or use digitally.

Examples of images you could create in Google Slides:

• Blog headers
• Other blog images (e.g. see the example of the promotional graphic at the start of this post. These are great to share on social media).
• Certificates
• Comics
• Photos with captions
• Flowcharts, mindmaps, or other graphic organizers
• How-to tutorials
• Classroom labels

Note: Another option for making images is Google Drawings. In this Venn diagram, Tony Vincent shows us how Google Drawings and Google Slides are the same and different.

Be sure to follow Tony on X or Instagram as he often shares tips for using Google Slides and other tech tools.

How To Make A Graphic Or Image Using Google Slides

#1 Open Google Slides

You can work with a blank presentation or a template.

#2 Change your image size (optional)

If you want your image to be a certain size (e.g. the size of your blog header), you can change this in File > Page Setup > Custom. You can enter the dimensions you’re after in inches, centimeters, points, or pixels.

Tip: If you’re making a blog header, you’ll find the required dimensions in Customizer as demonstrated here.

#3 Make your background transparent (or another color)

If you want your image to have a transparent background, click on File > Change background.

Then choose Transparent (or another color).

If you select a transparent background, there will be no background when you download your image as PNG or JPEG.

#4 Create your design

Add the text, images, and shapes that you’d like on your design.

Tip: If you want to experiment with a design element but you’re not sure if you’ll like it, duplicate your slide before making your changes. Then you can choose the one you like best.

Right-click on the slide in the navigation panel and select “Duplicate slide”.

#5 Save your design as an image

When you’re ready, go to File > Download as > JPEG image or PNG image. Save your image to your device. 

You’ll then have an image file that you can print or use in your digital creations.

Here is a simple blog header image made with Google Slides by modifying a template.

These 7 examples are only the tip of the iceberg of ways you could use Google Slides in the classroom.

We’d love you to share your own examples in a comment. Scroll down to find the comment box.

How To Embed Google Slides In Your Blog Post Or Page

As you’ve seen, Google Slides can be used in so many different ways. You can amplify this learning even more by sharing your work with an authentic audience on your blog.

Google Slides presentations can be easily embedded in blog posts or pages using HTML code (don’t worry if you’ve never done this before — it’s easy).

Note: If you’re using Edublogs, you’ll need Edublogs Pro or CampusPress in order to embed HTML code. This is to prevent misuse by spammers.

Let’s take a look at how to embed a Google Slides presentation into a blog post or page. You’ll find the written instructions below and then a video and PDF version.

This is a two-step process. First, you need to get the embed code from your Slides presentation then add it to your blog.

Step One: Get the embed code for your Slides presentation

1) Open your Slides presentation

You can go to your Drive or directly to your Slides collection to find your presentation. Double click on the presentation to open it.

2) Publish to the web

Go to File > Publish to the web

You’ll find File in the top left-hand corner of your page.

Click on Embed. There are a few options to control the size and speed of the slides. Changing these options isn’t essential (medium is usually a good size).

Click on Publish.

You’ll receive a warning that you’re about to publish to the web. Press OK.

3) Copy the embed code

After you press OK, your HTML embed code will appear in a box. You need to copy this code to add to your blog post or page.

How to copy:

• Click on the text to highlight it if it’s not already highlighted
• Press Control C (Windows) or Command C (Mac)
• Alternatively, right-click and press Copy

Note: If you ever want to unpublish your Slides presentation so it’s not available on the web, repeat these steps and click on the small arrow at the bottom of the box that says Published content and settings. Select Stop publishing.

Step Two: Add the embed code to your blog post or page

These instructions show how to add your Slides presentation to a blog post. The same process applies to pages.

1) Open your post

Go to your blog dashboard and open the post you’re working on. Or, go to Posts > Add New.

2) Add Media

Place your cursor where you want the Slides presentation to appear and then click on the Add Media button.

3) Insert Embed Code

In the Add Media window, click on the Insert Embed Code tab on the left.

4) Paste Embed Code

Paste the embed code into the Insert Embed code box.

How to paste:

• Press Control V (Windows) or Command V (Mac)
• Alternatively, right-click and select Paste

Click Insert Into Post.

5) Publish

When you’ve finished writing your post, click Publish.

You should now see your embedded Slides presentation when you view the published post. You can also preview your post to see what it looks like before publishing.

Here’s an example of an embedded Google Slides presentation.

Video: How To Embed A Google Slides Presentation

This 3 minute video takes you through the process described above.

PDF: How To Embed A Google Slides Presentation

You’re welcome to print this 2 page PDF to show your students or colleagues how to embed their Google Slides presentation into a blog post or page.

>>Click here to download a copy of the PDF

Using Google Slides In Remote Learning

If you’re teaching remotely, you’ll need to offer your students a planner or lesson descriptions.

Some teachers put their planners in a Google Slides presentation.

Don’t forget to add these Slides presentations to a blog, LMS, or website so they don’t get lost).

• You can include text, links, and videos of yourself teaching to a Slides presentation amongst other things.
• One major benefit is you can copy and edit your planner so you don’t have to start from scratch each day.
• Check out this post by Alice Keeler for more advice on using Slides in remote learning.

Here’s an example from US kindergarten teacher Megan Peschke @MeganPeschke). Don’t be put off by the age group. This idea could be adapted for any age!

Click here to view the Google Slides presentation in a new tab.

Instructions for Editing and Using Megan’s Google Slides

1. Click on this link:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Bl534rtloR0AjD2wgfLPVrJs2Q6BDS9DEz2G2m9Fzgs/copy

2. You will be prompted to make a copy (screenshot below).

3. The Slides will be saved in your Google Drive.

4. You can edit the Google Slides to suit.

SlidesMania have also published a fantastic free weekly planner template that can be used in Google Slides or PowerPoint. Find it here. 

Conclusion

Google Slides is a versatile way for teachers and students to create, collaborate, and present. There’s a lot you can do with Google Slides beyond a standard oral presentation.

Many teachers and students enjoy embedding their Google Slides presentations into a blog post or page. Sharing work with an authentic audience yields many benefits!

Further Reading

You might also be interested in reading:

A Beginner’s Guide To Google Photos

Canva In The Classroom: Getting Started, Example Designs, And Tips!

Six Tools To Create Interactive Learning Content On Your Blog

This is a guest post from Roslyn Green who is a secondary school (high school) teacher from Melbourne, Australia.

Roslyn uses Edublogs and CampusPress to blog with a number of her classes a variety of ways which she explained in a popular post on The Edublogger in 2018.

Since her last post, Roslyn has been investigating different ways to embed eLearning options on her blogs. She has tried out a number of free websites that allow the development of interactive activities for students (online worksheets, games, and so on).

In this post, Rosyln goes through six different free tools that you might find useful to make your class blog or website more interactive. They are:

• Flippity
• H5P
• Playbuzz
• LearningApps
• Quizizz
• Tinycards

Back To Basics!

If you’re new to blogging, you might need help with the basics before diving into these tools.

• Don’t have a class blog or website yet? This free self-paced course will walk you through the process of getting started!
• Don’t know how to embed content on your blog? It’s simple once you get the hang of it. This tutorial will show you what to do. Note: Embedding can’t be allowed on free blogs due to misuse by spammers.
• Don’t know how to add links to your text on your blog posts or pages? Check out this tutorial. 

Now on to Roslyn’s post…

A Message From Roslyn

Dear Colleagues, Teachers, and Fellow Bloggers,

The six activity options that I have introduced below are relatively easy for teachers to develop, yet engaging and absorbing for students to use. Furthermore, they can all be embedded or linked in your blog posts in order to vary classroom work, consolidate student learning and facilitate differentiation where necessary.

Some of these activities are almost guaranteed to transform even the most dreaded afternoon class into a walk in the park.

I hope you will find the websites as useful, varied and intuitive as I have.

All the best from Roslyn Green

My own blogs: History | Psychology | German

1) Flippity https://www.flippity.net

The Flippity site is a treasure trove. It allows you to serve up interactive activities with limited time outlay on your part.

With its support, you can make flashcards, provide matching games, generate bingo cards, print crosswords and try many other options. All you will need to get started is a Gmail account and access to Google Docs.

Essentially, you can make a set of flashcards on any topic and then, from this single data set, generate several other activities. Here is a clickable example:

An Introduction to the Renaissance

Once you have created your flashcard set by following the instructions at https://www.flippity.net, you can generate a number of exercises and games to consolidate learning of vocabulary and understanding of concepts.

For example, you can get your students to play a matching game on their devices. It looks like the screenshot below and is dangerously addictive.

There is a host of other options, but my favourite one is the bingo card generator which allows you to print a set of randomised cards OR give your students a link that brings up a bingo screen on their own devices.

Here is a bingo link for the set above, along with a screen capture to show how this looks on students’ screens.

Students always ask to play bingo games “one more time”.

The advantage of this option is that the teacher can go beyond the factual information in the cards and begin to focus on concepts. For example, “Mark a picture that demonstrates the Renaissance fascination with the human body” could lead to several choices, as could “Find an example of the Renaissance interest in realistic depictions of nature”.

In this way, students can choose whichever option brings them closer to BINGO! — and scarcely notice that they are learning.

2) H5P https://h5p.org

This site was my best find in 2018. It is free, interactive, modern-looking and intuitive.

In a single presentation or quiz, you can introduce multiple choice questions, fill-the-blank texts, drag the answer to the blank and various other question types.

An online presentation can include embedded questions of various kinds.

Below is an embedded example of a presentation quiz. Click on it to try it out.

History: The Anglo-Saxons and the Early English Language

As you can see, this embedded quiz looks like part of your page or post.

A particularly addictive type of question is drag and drop. This allows you to create matching games in which students are required to classify or match up answers, pictures, words or statements.

Once you’ve mastered the process of creating these questions, which is a little tricky at first, you can create:

• Diagrams to be labelled
• Timelines with pictures, dates, and descriptions of events
• Scientific classification puzzles
• Vocabulary lists

In short, you can create whatever inspires you and engages your students.

Psychology: Distinguishing Behaviours, Thoughts and Feelings

The H5P option is much more complex and cerebral than Flippity. It is ideal for presenting more challenging written material and consolidating vocabulary through “cloze” questions. It is even useful for introducing new content.

For instance, I like the idea of an “either-or” introductory quiz, in which students have to do a fair bit of guessing and receive feedback on each answer — followed by a quick vocabulary check, as in this example:

The Life of Peasants

You can see all my quizzes at this link (and clone them if you wish in order to speed up your own quiz-making).

3) Playbuzz https://www.playbuzz.com

The Playbuzz site allows you to create an interactive story for your students by presenting information with pictures and text and posing questions with built-in feedback for readers.

In the process of creation, you can choose from a range of presentation screens, such as:

• A quotation screen
• Your own text
• Embedded videos
• “Trivia” screens that permit you to include questions for students to answer
• “Convo” screen through which you can present a range of different viewpoints

Below is a screenshot of a “convo” screen at the end of my Playbuzz story about the Mongol attacks on Japan in the 13th century.

Playbuzz could, therefore, be used not only by teachers but also by students as an alternative to a more traditional assignment format or as an idea for students’ own blogs.

It provides a multimedia story-telling program which would be engaging for students to use, although it requires time and concentration to try out and master all the options available.

I used the “convo screen” above as a springboard for students to write comments from 3-4 different perspectives. This worked well as a prompt for student blog comments on this post.

As you can see from the collage of screens from my story below, a Playbuzz story can be part text, part video, part quiz and part revision: whatever you want it to be.

Note: It is possible to embed a Playbuzz “story” into your post or page. Since its full length is displayed, however, I have avoided doing so here.

4) LearningApps https://learningapps.org

I mentioned the next three options briefly in my blogging story. Each one deserves a closer examination.

The LearningApps site is free, varied, fairly intuitive and very reliable. You will find a variety of “apps” or quiz styles there, such as crosswords, label the diagram, multiple choice, fill the gap and so forth.

This site is handy for revision of material already covered and ideal for promoting reading and comprehension of key terms. Your “apps” can be embedded in your site or provided to students via a link or a QR code.

It is important to provide HELP options so that students can click on the “lightbulb help button” if they get bogged down, especially when completing crosswords. In this way, they have a chance of figuring out the answer if it doesn’t come to mind immediately, which provides another independent learning step.

Example of a Crossword:

Students often work well together to solve a crossword and I find that this is an enjoyable way for them to focus on keywords and consolidate new vocabulary.

Here are examples of some other types of apps that can be created and embedded in your site via LearningApps:

• Label a Diagram: Structure of a Neuron (Psychology)
• Label a Picture: Mein Zimmer (German)
• Multiple Choice Quiz: Penetrating the Human Mystery (Psychology)
• Matching Grid: Anne Frank – Wortliste (German)
• Cloze Task: MLK – Ich habe einen Traum (German)

5) Wayground https://wayground.com 

This site is based on multiple choice questions, like Kahoot!, but with some valuable additional options.

One option is that students can play alone or against each other. I usually get them to play alone before they play competitively and I make the competition optional.

The games can also be set up with or without a time limit. Questions may be viewed as a presentation or as flashcards before the quiz is attempted, which provides an extra step to learning and mastery for weaker students.

After the game, students can review their answers.

Finally, it is possible to print the questions, which can also benefit students who need extra thinking and reading time.

An added feature is the “memes” sets that you can either choose or create yourself. In this way, students receive encouraging and amusing feedback after each question.

As you can see from the screenshots above and the memes below, this site is visually engaging, as well as providing an entertaining challenge for students.

My example of a Wayground for a unit on Ancient Rome: Vesuvius and Pompeii.

6) Tinycards https://tinycards.duolingo.com

This flashcard-making platform is based on the Duolingo language learning concept.

The option of adding diagrams and pictures, the sheer intuitive simplicity of the interface and the interactivity of the “lessons” that are generated are all reasons to consider using this website and placing links to your sets on your blog.

Students can also join up and create their own sets of flashcards. Consequently, Tinycards can be useful as an introductory task (you make a set for the students), as a challenge (the students create a set themselves) or as a revision strategy for older, more independent students.

I favour creating cards with a “cloze” style of task in which the student supplies a single key term (or selects it).

Conclusion

We thank Roslyn for sharing these six tools and generously providing us with her own examples.

We know that practical and free online tools are so useful for teachers who are always looking for new ways to engage students and help them learn.

The great thing about a blog is that it is simply a blank canvas and web tools can really bring it alive!

We know that many Edublogs users have already shared the platform with colleagues during staff meetings, team discussions, or professional development sessions.

Some educators also like to give parents an overview of Edublogs during parent information evenings or school council meetings.

To make it easier for teachers to share the power of Edublogs with others, we’ve put together some resources.

Overview Presentation

This overview of Edublogs can be viewed as a Google Slides presentation or as a PDF. 

It goes through:

• What is Edublogs?
• The benefits of using Edublogs
• How to get started with Edublogs
• Example blogs from different age groups and settings
• How to learn more

>>Download the PDF here

>>Make a copy of the Google Slides presentation here

Printable PDF

This two page document explains Edublogs in a nutshell and goes through some frequently asked questions.

Distribute it to staff or share it with parents.

>> Download the PDF here

You’ll also find these resources on our Blogging 101 page.

Anyone Can Publish Online

When many educators and parents were at school, publishing online was either impossible or reserved for the very tech savvy. It’s now easier than ever to claim your own space on the web!

Edublogs uses a customized version of WordPress which gives you the scope to either stick to the basics, or create a highly personalized site to share with the world.

Edublogs offers you flexibility beyond blogging. You can:

• Set up a blog in a traditional way (i.e. regular posts showing up in reverse chronological order)
• Create a more static website
• Include a mixture of blog and website
• Develop a resource portal
• Work on a digital portfolio
• Develop any other kind of online space that interests you

Whatever stage you’re at or whatever sort of site you’re working on, our support team is just an email away — 24/7. So you’re never alone on your blogging journey!

Questions? Comments?

If you have any questions about Edublogs, please do get in touch.

Any suggestions for other resources that would help you learn more about Edublogs or introduce it to others? Be sure to let us know.

You Might Also Enjoy Reading…

• 10 Examples Of Great Class Blogs
• 10 Great Schools Websites Built With WordPress
• 6 Tools To Create Interactive Learning Content On Your Blog
• Why WordPress Is The Best Choice For Student Blogging

Who used to see the work you created at school?

For many of us, the audience was small — maybe just the teacher, a few classmates, or family members (if the work didn’t end up crumpled at the bottom of a school bag!).

Today, things are very different. Students can share their work with a wide and varied audience through blogs and digital portfolios.

That’s an exciting opportunity — but how do you actually find that audience? Publishing online doesn’t automatically mean people will see it.

In this post, we’ll explore six effective ways to help your students connect with a genuine audience for their blog posts or online creations.

What Are The Benefits Of An Authentic Audience?

An authentic audience is powerful. When students know someone beyond the teacher will see their work, they can be motivated to push themselves and work harder.

This is something Clive Thompson wrote about in Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.

Alan November is also well-known for suggesting,

“Stop saying hand it in, start saying publish it.” This paradigm shift from an audience of one to an audience of the world will inspire more students to achieve up to their potential, while instilling a life-long passion for genuine learning.

Making schoolwork purposeful can really impact student motivation and engagement.

Furthermore, when students have an audience for their blog posts, readers can provide further information, opinions, suggest resources, seek answers to questions and so on. This can drive a cycle of further learning and development.

The Role Of The Teacher

In the past, the teacher was the audience. Now, the teacher can help their students find their own audiences.

This doesn’t have to be a daunting process. You can start small and over time build up to establishing global audiences that can offer diverse perspectives.

Let’s go through six options for finding an audience for students’ blog posts, starting with the simplest options.

1) Fellow Classmates

If all or some of the students in your class have their own blog, one of the best starting points is to encourage the students to be an audience for each other.

Teach students about the give and take nature of blogging and being part of an online community. This involves producing content, reading content, commenting, reflecting, and perhaps even using insights from others to construct new blog posts.

You might do this informally and just ask your students to choose a classmate’s blog to read and comment on.

Alternatively, you might like to set up a more structured arrangement where students work in small peer groups to mentor one another. For example, some teachers create blog mentor groups where students are assigned to read and comment on each other’s posts regularly.

If you’re using a class management tool like My Class, you can even generate participation reports to track which students are engaging with their peers.

Many teachers also find success with peer editing activities, where students provide feedback on drafts before publishing — helping to build both confidence and writing skills.

2) Family Members

Parents and family members can offer a ready-made audience for student work, however, some education and ongoing encouragement is very important.

In 2017, we published a Guide to Involving Parents with Blogs.

Here are some key points:

• Family members won’t be willing or able to get involved in blogging if they don’t know anything about it. Education is key.
• You can try offering information about the blogs and how to comment via a printed navigation guide, pages on your class blog, emails, newsletters, an information evening, a how-to video, Family Blogging Afternoons, or Family Blogging Month.
• Regular encouragement throughout the year will ensure family members don’t forget about their role as an audience member.
• Particularly enthusiastic volunteers could become reps who help get others in the community involved.

Your ready-made audience doesn’t only consist of parents, of course. There may be other family members, including grandparents, who would love to become part of your blogging community but just need guidance or encouragement.

3) Team Blogging

Another great way to help your students build their audience is to form reciprocal relationships with other blogging classes near or far.

How many other classes you connect with is up to you. You might decide to just team up with one other class, although a popular choice is to collaborate with a group of four classes that take turns reading and commenting on one another’s blog posts.

To get the most out of team blogging, you want to make a genuine commitment to read and comment on one another’s blog posts over a set period of time, e.g., a month, a semester, or a school year.

Often, the focus class is rotated each week. So if you have four classes, as demonstrated in the diagram below, each class will receive comments for one week and then write comments for the other three weeks.

Where to find classes to team up with?

Firstly, decide whether you’re looking for a class where every student has their own blog or there is just one class blog.

Next, you’ll want to consider what age range would be suitable to work with.

Twitter (X) is a great place for teachers to connect and find classes with similar blogging projects.

Once you’ve found a class that looks like a good match, reach out to the teacher via Twitter or by commenting on a post on their class blog. They might even know other classes interested in joining in.

4) Projects

There are a number of structured projects you can join to help your students connect with others, build their network, and find an authentic audience for their work.

Here are a couple of great options:

• The Global Read Aloud (A 6 week project held during October/November. Classes connect around shared readings of books)
• ePals (Find ‘pen pals’ in other classes around the world)

5) Your PLN

There are many reasons why it’s great to have your own PLN (Professional Learning Network) as a teacher. The graphic below summarizes just some of the reasons. These are explained in more detail in this post. 

If you’re not familiar with PLNs or how to go about becoming a connected educator, we have a free, self-paced course that can help.

Having your own PLN is a key way to also help your students connect with others and start developing their own networks.

What would this look like in terms of helping your students find an audience for their work? Here are just a few examples:

• Publish a tweet to share your student blog posts and invite comments.
• Reach out to someone who works in a field that your student is interested in to help extend their learning further.
• Set up a Facebook group with members of your global PLN who are interested in sharing students’ work and helping to find authentic audiences.

6) Make Sites Findable On The Web

Outside of education, most people land on a website because Google sent them there.

For older or more advanced students, you might start having a discussion about finding an audience organically. Together you could explore how people who publish online outside of education go about this.

Students might even start creating content that people will be looking for in Google. To aid this process, you could:

• Ensure your blog is indexed in search engines like Google (Dashboard > Settings > Reading > Allow search engines to index this site). Note: this is only available with Edublogs Pro and CampusPress accounts to prevent misuse by spammers.
• Install the Simple SEO plugin and type in a ‘Meta Description’ about the site and posts that will show up in Google results.
• Assign posts to tags and categories to help readers find what they’re interested in reading.
• Use Google Analytics to see who’s visiting your site, where they find your site, and what they’re most interested in. This data could provide inspiration for content that you’d like to update or expand upon. Learn about setting up Google Analytics for your Edublogs Pro or CampusPress account here.

As an active voice on the web, students can become part of rich conversations that are much wider than their classroom. They can learn that their insights and ideas are valuable.  

Conclusion

Helping your students find an authentic audience for their work might take a little time and effort to set up but the rewards will be worth it!

Students can learn to think beyond grades and pleasing the teacher, and start contributing their voice, knowledge, and resources to a global community.

How do you find an audience for your students’ work online? If you have any tips or ideas to share, we’d love to hear from you!

Related Reading

50 New Blog Post Ideas For Students

My Class: Student Blogging Made Easy

10 Ways To Introduce Your Students To Blogging

There are countless fantastic tools available within Google Drive — including Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Forms, and Google Sheets.

All of these tools are free, web-based, and used daily by people across classrooms, homes, and workplaces worldwide.

One tool you may not have explored yet is Google Drawings.

You might have heard of it but wondered what it’s actually useful for.

If you’re a blogger, Google Drawings can be the perfect tool for creating visuals that make your site stand out.

And for teachers or students, it’s a brilliant way to express learning in a creative and engaging way.

This post explains:

What is Google Drawings?

How to create a Google Drawing

How to embed a Google Drawing into a blog post or page

Ideas For Using Google Drawings In The Classroom

What is Google Drawings?

Google Drawings is a very versatile tool that allows you to make all sorts of graphic designs and publications.

Canva is another popular tool for graphic design and we have a guide to using Canva if you’d like to learn more.

Many people also use Google Slides for creating designs but there are differences. Check out our blog post about Google Slides.

In this Venn diagram, Tony Vincent shows us how Google Drawings and Google Slides are the same and different.

Be sure to follow Tony on Twitter or Instagram as he often shares tips for using Google tools and other tech tools.

Tony has also started a new initiative called Shapegrams which is a great way for students to learn design skills, problem solving, and creativity through Google Drawings. You don’t need to have experience as the activities include instructional videos from Tony.

Shapegrams are reproducible pictures with instructional videos, design tips, and extension activities. They’re great for bell work, stations, extra time, and enrichment. #GoogleEdu

There’s a new Shapegram every week! https://t.co/jA6ox3lubm pic.twitter.com/nXwxt67lWX

— Shapegrams (@shapegrams) August 25, 2019

Quick facts about Google Drawings:

• It’s free.
• Your creation starts with a blank canvas of any size.
• You access Google Drawings through the web or via a Chrome app that can be used offline (works best on a computer).
• Multiple users can open and edit drawings simultaneously in real time. They can also engage in chat.
• You can make a Drawing with many components. You can add images to your canvas as well as shapes, arrows, scribbles, text, and more.
• There are many sharing options for your Google Drawing. It can be private, you can share it with select people, or you can share it publicly on the web. You can choose whether people can view or edit your Drawing.
• Your Drawing is automatically saved as you work on it.
• Google Drawings can be embedded in blogs and websites. They can also be downloaded as a JPEG, PNG, PDF etc.
• You can insert a Google Drawing into a Google Doc as explained here by Jake Miller.

Here’s a graphic summary of the above. Feel free to share it with colleagues who want to learn more about Google Drawings.

How To Start A Google Drawing

You’ll need a Google Account to access Google Drawings.

If you use Gmail or other Google products, this will be the same username/password. Teachers might also have a school Google account.

If you haven’t got a Google account yet, you can sign up here:

https://accounts.google.com/signup

Google Drive is the place where your Google Drawings are stored. It’s also one of the ways you can start a new Google Drawing.

You access your Google Drive on the web through this URL:

https://drive.google.com

Click on New in the top left-hand corner. Then click on More and then Google Drawings.

Alternatively, you can type https://docs.google.com/drawings into your browser or access Drawings via the Chrome app. If you use the app you can access Drawings when you’re offline.

How To Make And Save A Google Drawing

You’ll notice when you start a new Google Drawing, using the methods described above, you will be presented with a blank canvas.

Creating a drawing is straightforward. Here are the basics of creating and saving your work.

1) Open Google Drawings

Access drawings via your Google Drive or the Chrome App. Alternatively, just type https://docs.google.com/drawings into your browser.

2) Change your image size (optional)

If you want your image to be a certain size (e.g. the size of your blog header), you can change this in File > Page Setup > Custom. You can enter the dimensions you’re after in inches, centimeters, points, or pixels.

Tip: If you’re making a blog header, you’ll find the required dimensions in Customizer as demonstrated here.

3) Consider your background color

By default, the background of your Google Drawing will be transparent. That means there will be no background when you download your image as PNG or JPEG.

If you want your image to have a different color background (or even solid white), right-click on your canvas and select background.

Then you can play around with solid backgrounds or gradients.

4) Create your design

Add the text, images, shapes, lines, charts and more that you’d like on your design by navigating the options under Insert.

5) Save your design as an image

When you’re ready, go to File > Download as > JPEG image or PNG image. Save your image to your device.

You can also save your image as a PDF if it’s something you’d like to print or distribute.

You’ll then have an image file that you can print or use in your digital creations including your blog.

You add an image to a blog post (or page) by selecting the “Add media” button from the top of the post editor. These instructions walk you through the process.

Here is a simple blog header image I made with Google Drawings.

Learn More About Google Drawings

If you’d like to be walked through the process of adding different elements to your Google Drawings canvas, set aside 8 minutes and check out this tutorial by Mike Harmon (HLModTech).

There are two other lessons in this series if you’d like to learn even more from Mike.

Ideas For Using Google Drawings In The Classroom

Google Drawings is an ideal tool for students and teachers to make images that they can print or use digitally.

Creations can be downloaded as JPEGs and PNGs. Drawings can also be embedded straight into a blog post or page (as demonstrated above).

Examples of images you could create in Google Drawings:

• Blog headers
• Other blog images (e.g. see the example of the promotional graphic at the start of this post. These are great to share on social media).
• Certificates
• Comics
• Photos with captions
• Flowcharts, mindmaps, or other graphic organizers
• How-to tutorials
• Classroom labels

Let’s take a look at some more examples of how teachers and students are using Google Drawings.

Avatars or characters

Sheri Edwards has created a tutorial that explains how to make an avatar using Google Drawings. Sheri has an additional post worth reading with some tips for using Google Drawings.

Classroom Ideas From Eric Curts

Eric has a fabulous website called Control Alt Achieve where he shares really practical tips and resources about Google products. Be sure to check out all his Google Drawings resources. 

They’re all shared under a Creative Commons license that allows you to use the resources freely with attribution.

This presentation is jam packed with tips and ideas.

All About Me By Roxi Thompson

US teacher Roxi, had her students use Google Drawings to create a graphic about themselves during the first week of school.

This could be a useful activity to introduce students to basic Google Drawings functions. It could be ideal to display on an About page and help build classroom community.

Here is an example from Roxi. Her blog post has some student examples that could be handy to show your class.

Tweetable Examples

Twitter is full of excellent examples of the projects that are happening in classrooms around the world.

Here are some noteworthy Google Drawings projects that might work in your own classroom!

@ls_teacher’s 3rd grade math students using Google Drawings to make arrays @BraggSchoolCSD #WeAreChesterNJ pic.twitter.com/XTb6j5pPXa

— Brad Currie (@TheBradCurrie) October 10, 2019

We are getting ready for Canadian School Library Day!! Our Grade 5 Library Leaders are exploring how they can use Google Drawings to create a poster all about our library space. @CdnSchoolLibrar #peelEML pic.twitter.com/2PdhzuHTtn

— LarkspurLLC (@LarkspurLibLC) October 9, 2019

Today we are making physical maps using #googledrawings #polyline feature to make physical maps. We are learning as we go, and having fun along the way. #thisisMEtsd #talawandaempowers @TSDMarshall @TalawandaSTEM pic.twitter.com/wT3AjKw3eK

— Lexie Withrow (@MissWithrow217) October 9, 2019

Third graders @PembertonElementary used Google Drawings to create charts and diagrams (English SOL 3.6c) about rounding (Math SOL 3.1b) and animal adaptations (Science SOL 3.4) https://t.co/ixPXR1oKKa pic.twitter.com/JXUhWNtuAS

— David Clough (@djdaverave) October 9, 2019

So this is why I’m not in advertising. We’ll be using Google Drawings with Yr4 to create Welsh Tourism posters this afternoon @stwinsholywell Check out my cool example.

Hoping the children will learn advantages of PNG, rotate, crop masks, order, image import, resize & gradients pic.twitter.com/Qr300wEWL3

— Rough Cuts (@roughcuts1) October 9, 2019

Trying to come up with some engaging ways to practice our phonics and spelling using Google Drawings! #centers #benchmark @FairviewPanther @teachmeLori pic.twitter.com/xz840UsIRm

— Laura Obando (@ABCClassroom) October 8, 2019

Mosaic Lighthouses made using #GoogleDrawing #GoogleDrawings #ccsd1deskpub https://t.co/HZdiyzvqEo pic.twitter.com/Mn6HmcwAs1

— DawnTechTeacher (@DawnTechTeacher) October 3, 2019

A sampling of the ecosystem food web projects Ss have created. @TSDMarshall #thisismetsd #TalawandaEmpowers pic.twitter.com/aVR5Qx0PX7

— Kari Croucher (@KariCroucher) October 10, 2019

Learning about the design process in computer class, inventing technologies to help others, designing in Google Drawings, & writing about the specs. Delran Ss prove the future is bright!@maryjohutch @Delran_Super @DelranSTEM @DeSimoneChristy @DemicheleErica pic.twitter.com/xS7hrBeLb2

— Dan the Computer Man (@DantheComputer1) October 3, 2019

Conclusion

Google Drawings is a versatile tool that has so much potential for bloggers and students of all ages.

Whether you need a graphic for a blog post, page, widget or blog header, Google Drawings is a handy solution that’s free and intuitive to use.

Many teachers and students enjoy embedding their Google Drawings into their blog posts. Sharing work with an authentic audience yields many benefits!

How are you using Google Drawings?

Do you have any tips or examples to share?

Do you have any questions about Google Drawings?

Leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

Further Reading

You might also be interested in reading:

A Beginner’s Guide To Google Slides In The Classroom

A Beginner’s Guide To Google Photos

Canva In The Classroom: Getting Started, Example Designs, And Tips!

Six Tools To Create Interactive Learning Content On Your Blog

If your students have their own blog, digital portfolio, or website, you may have found that their enthusiasm for writing starts off strong. Students typically can’t wait to express themselves and publish on their own online space, often for an authentic audience.

Sometimes when the initial excitement fades, students start facing “bloggers’ block” or get in a rut of writing the same style of post repeatedly.

Our engaging collection of writing prompts is designed to help students keep the momentum going with their blogs, websites, or digital portfolios. These prompts encourage exploration across different genres, tools, and mediums. Whether you’re working with reluctant writers or simply looking for fresh, authentic ideas to inspire your students to publish, you’ve come to the right place.

Scroll down to dive straight into the prompts, or read on to find out more about the types of posts you could see on a blog, personal website, or digital portfolio.

We have created a PDF eBook of the prompts that you can save, print, or share. You don’t need to ask permission to use the eBook as it has a BY-NC-ND Creative Commons license. You just can’t make derivatives or use the eBook commercially. And you should give attribution. Note that this eBook was created in 2021 may contain outdated links.

10 Types Of Blog Posts

Blogging isn’t like traditional writing — it’s a unique genre and it’s worth exploring what’s possible.

Here are 10 types of blog posts you commonly see on the web. This might give you inspiration to mix up the posts on your students’ blogs, websites, or portfolios.

1. Reflection: Deep thoughts and self-reflection on what you’ve learned, experienced, or what you’re thinking about. Putting it all out there can really help organize thoughts and ideas.

2. How-to/Helpful: Everyone loves using the web to find out how to do something. This classic style of post can be enhanced with pictures, videos, and other media.

3. Journal/Diary/Recount: This is a versatile style of post that’s great for reading logs, field trips, science labs, special events, study abroad, and so on.

4. News/Announcement: These posts aim to keep readers up-to-date with important information. In this example, educator George Couros announces a book study.

5. Marketing/Sales: Typically these are commercial style posts. Students could use blogs to advertise things like school events and fundraisers. For example, the students at Auroa School made a video to promote their school.

6. Controversial/Debate/Editorial: This involves taking a stance on an issue while backing up thoughts with facts and proof. Sidd’s debate on cell phones in schools is a good example.

7. Reviews: Many people love to take to the web to share their reviews (sites like Amazon and TripAdvisor may offer inspiration!). Here’s an example of a book review from teacher Kevin Hodgson.

8. Listicle: This is another name for a list post. We know how popular articles are that start with something like “10 ways to…”. These sorts of posts often offer the reader quick wins. In this example, Mrs. Yollis and her students list their top 12 quarantine essentials.

9. Curation Posts: Sometimes a blog post or page is used to curate a list of resources on a particular topic. This page of live events and virtual field trips is an example of a curated list from Mrs. Hamman.

10. Ongoing Series: Choose any of the above, but split it up into several shorter posts that get published over a set period of time. The posts could connect sequentially, or just fall under the same umbrella topic. For example, Sheri Edwards did a series of posts using the Slice of Life writing prompts.

Ideas And Prompts For Student Writers

We’ve divided the prompts up into 8 broad topics to make navigation easier. Of course, some prompts could fit into more than one category.

Getting Started

Online Prompts

Interdisciplinary and Fun

Art, Images, and Music

Reading and Writing

History and Geography

Math and Science

Web Tools

Getting Started

These topics are ideal for getting students used to publishing online.

• Introductions: Who are you? Share your hobbies, interests, family background, and anything else you want others to know while remembering to protect your personal information if your site is public. This information might be best on a static About page so it’s easy for new visitors to refer to.
• Personal A to Z: Create an A-Z of yourself or one of your interests (e.g. an A-Z of basketball or gardening).
• Avatar: Create an avatar (online character) to use on your blog and write a post to explain how it represents you. This post on the Student Blogging Challenge demonstrates some different ways you can make an avatar using online tools.
• Commenting Guidelines: Write a post to explain what you expect when someone leaves a comment on your blog. There is some information and examples on the Student Blogging Challenge site on how to write commenting guidelines.
• Goals: Share some goals that you have set for yourself. For example, you could publish one goal for this week, one goal for this month, and one goal for this school year. Describe how you plan to accomplish your goals.
• Holiday: Share what you did on a recent holiday or vacation. Include photos or videos if you have permission. Alternatively, you could write about your dream vacation. Where would you go and what would you do?
• Hero/Mentor: Write about someone who inspires you. It could be someone you know in real life or someone famous from the past or present. What is it about this person that makes them so special?
• My Country or Culture: Publish facts about your country or a culture that you’re interested in. You could write a post focusing on food, festivals, songs, stories, clothing, geography, or anything else.
• School History: Write some information about your school’s history. You could focus on the buildings, write about someone who used to go to the school, or reflect on how the curriculum or rules have changed.
• Classrooms: Explain what the classrooms and buildings are like in your school or describe what your perfect classroom would look like. Use your imagination; your dream classroom could be indoors, outdoors, in a school, or somewhere else!
• Favorite…anything: Publish a post that discusses topics you’re passionate about. You could write about your favorite animal, TV show, movie, holiday, sports, or hobbies.
• Reader Quiz: Your quiz could be about anything — Disney movies, chemistry, capital cities, football… you choose! Readers could answer in a comment or in Google Forms. This could be a great way to get to know your audience. You might like to do a follow-up post that goes over the results, including graphs, charts, and analysis. BEAM is a simple tool for making basic charts.
• Guest Post: Ask a friend or family member if they’d like to write a guest post on your blog. Make sure you approve it before publishing.
• Top 10: Make a top 10 list of anything. For example, you could rank your favorite songs, actors, sports, or foods.
• Interview: Interview someone in your family or community. There might be interesting people at your school you could interview too like your principal, cleaner, librarian, or crossing supervisor.
• Three Wishes: If you had three wishes, what would they be? Invite your readers to share their own wishes in a comment.

Online Prompts

• Video Prompts: John Spencer has made some fabulous short video writing prompts that could really get your imagination going. Check out the YouTube playlists of prompts here.
• Pobble 365: Every day there is a new photo prompt and literacy starters posted on the Pobble 365 website. These are ideal to respond to when you’re stuck for ideas.
• New York Times Writing Prompts: Multiple times a week, The New York Times publishes writing prompts for students. There are Picture Prompts (images with questions), What’s Going on in this Picture? (images stripped of captions) and Student Opinions (daily questions inspired by Times’ content). There’s lots of inspiration for you to choose from!
• What’s Going on in this Graph? Another initiative from The New York Times, a graph, map, or chart is published regularly as an invitation for students to discuss. Find a graph that fascinates you and share your interpretation.
• 1,000 Writing Prompts: The New York Times has also compiled 1,000 Writing Prompts For Students. There’s sure to be something that interests you amongst that collection!
• Language is a Virus: This excellent site has a multitude of prompts, exercises, and gadgets to inspire your writing. One example is Visual Poetry where you can display your writing in artistic and whimsical ways. Screenshot your creation for a blog post.
• Practice Your English: MMG’s English blog has been created by a teacher with prompts for students to practice their English. You will find jokes, quotes, recipes, videos, and more. Find one that interests you and share a response on your blog.
• Visual Writing Prompts: Teach Starter has created a collection of visual writing prompts. The images are Creative Commons Zero which means you’re free to upload them to your blog.
• Creative Writing Prompts: Writer’s Digest offers regular written prompts that are ideal for older students. Have a browse and see if there is a prompt to inspire a new post.
• Scholastic Story Starters: If you’re in K-2, you might enjoy this a fun interactive site where you can create your own prompts for a variety of writing genres.
• Wonderopolis: This popular multi-disciplinary site posted a “wonder of the day” with lots of kid-friendly information, definitions, and a quiz. You could choose the daily wonder or a past wonder and reflect or summarize it in a blog post. You could even add a Wonderopolis widget to your blog. The site was unfortunately closed in July 2025.
• Writer Igniter: Get inspiration from Writer Igniter which provides you with a character, situation, prop, and setting. This is best for middle school or high school students.
• Printable Comic Prompts: MakeBeliefsComix has a huge collection of writing prompts divided into categories. There’s something for everyone!
• Random Emoji Generator: Create a story based on emoji prompts. Go to the byrdseed site to generate your prompts. You can then copy the emojis into a post and write a story based on them.
• The Student Blogging Challenge: Every March and October we run a free 8 week supported blogging challenge where students aged 8-16 are given weekly prompts. Student and class posts are visited by a global audience. Maybe you can join us for the next challenge?

Interdisciplinary and Fun

• Expert FAQs: Are you an expert on something? LEGO? Minecraft? Pokemon? Ballet? Write “Frequently Asked Questions” and answers about your topic.
• Test Review “Cheat Sheet”: Use images, videos, and text to create a post that your classmates can use as a study guide to prepare for an upcoming assessment.
• Exit Ticket: Write a short summary of what you learned in class before leaving. Include any questions you still have and a list of any assignments or tasks you still need to complete.
• Quotes: Choose a quote that inspires you or is relevant to what you’re learning. Explain why you chose the quote and what it means to you. We have a post all about using quotes that will give you some tips.
• Video Comparison: Embed two or more videos on a topic from YouTube, Vimeo, or TED and then compare and contrast the videos. If you’re unsure how to embed videos, we have a help guide to walk you through it.
• Would You Rather? Create some “would you rather..?” questions for your audience such as, “Would you rather live 100 years in the past or future?” or “Would you rather be able to fly or swim underwater without breathing?” Share your own thoughts too!
• Future Me: Write an email to yourself when you are one, five, or ten years older. This could be a blog post in itself, or for 13+ students, the FutureMe website could be used to actually send the email.
• Jokes: Who doesn’t like jokes? Find some online or share your own favorite jokes to give your readers a laugh. The TLC Tutoring Updates blog used images and scrolling space to format their joke post. Alternatively, you could reveal the answers in the comments section.
• Gratitude Journal: Use your blog or portfolio to reflect on what you’re grateful for. Perhaps this could become a weekly practice.
• Special Days of the Year: Use a website like Days of the Year to find out what fun or lighthearted days are being celebrated. For a more serious approach, select an International Day from the United Nations International Day list. Write a post to explain the special day and what it means to you. (Teacher tip: You may want to choose the days for younger students, rather than allowing them to browse these sites).
• Principal for the Day: What would you do if you were principal for the day? Don’t hold back in sharing your ideas!
• Video Game Review: Write a review for an online game. Share the pros, cons, and a star rating. Don’t forget to include the link to the game so others can try it.
• Kindness: List some random acts of kindness that you’d like to see other students try. You might get some ideas from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.
• Recipes: Pretend you’re a food blogger! Share a recipe that you enjoy eating or making. Spice up your post with a photo of the end result.
• World Records: Browse the kids’ Guinness World Records website and write about an impressive record. Or tell your readers what sort of world record you’d like to attempt.
• Secret Code: Come up with a secret code and share a message on your blog or portfolio. Perhaps a number could represent each letter of the alphabet or you could write each word backwards. Ask readers to guess what the post says in a comment.
• Curious Minds: Publish a list of questions you have about the world or about a certain topic. You don’t have to answer the questions. It can sometimes just be good to explore the things you’re curious about.
• Memes: These are fun messages that are spread widely online. Maybe you could make a meme that relates to a topic you’re studying at school. Meredith Akers has shared a Google Drawings meme generator that’s safe for students.
• Sports Report: Provide an overview of a sports competition your school, community, or professional team has been involved in. If you choose a local sport, perhaps you could interview some participants or coaches.
• Life in the Future: Make some predictions about what life will be like in 5, 10, 50, or even 100 years from now. You could even interview others to find out their thoughts on the future.
• Trends: Discuss the latest trends in the schoolyard. Games, fashion, toys … what’s hot and what’s not? Maybe you could ask someone older than you what the trends were when they were at school.
• Playground Fun: Offer activity suggestions that other students could try out at recess and lunchtime if they’re bored. You could even sort your suggestions into age groups.
• Productivity Tips: Help your fellow students learn to manage their time better with some useful tips and tricks. Maybe you have tips for managing homework or chores at home, using a diary or calendar, or making lists.
• Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use: These are important topics for any publisher to know about. Check out our Guide to Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use on The Edublogger. Write a post, create a video, or design a poster to teach others about these topics.
• Digital Citizenship: What tips do you have to stay safe online? Share these with others in a post, a video, comics, memes, or posters. Check out these internet safety tips for students for ideas.
• Blogging Tips: Be your school’s “problogger” and share some bite-sized tips for fellow bloggers. Maybe you could make tutorials on things like adding images to your post, making a custom header, or adding links to your site. You could even make a screencast using a tool like Loom or Screencastify.

Art, Images, and Music

• Photo Blog: Have you heard of 365 photography or “a photo a day” type blogs? This is something Linda Yollis has been doing since 2010 with her Yollis’ 365 Project. Students and the community are invited to send in photos and captions. You could create a similar style blog or post series.
• Picture Prompt: Add a copyright-free image from Photos For Class to a post and write about it. Create a poem, story, information report, or any other style of writing based on your image.
• Image or Artwork: There are many free web tools where you can create digital artwork. Some examples are Google Drawings, emoji.ink, Toy Theatre Art Tools, Bomomo abstract art, Tate Kids street art, Draw Island, and Auto Draw.  If you want to be blown away with what’s possible, check out the Fugle Blog where K-5 teacher, Tricia Fuglestad, combines art and technology in truly creative ways.
• Infographic: Use a tool like Canva, Piktochart, Venngage, or Infogram to create an infographic and then write a post describing your graphic. Alternatively, create infographics using several of these different tools then write a review of the tools you used. Which one was best and why?
• Get Crafty: Try a craft activity with paper or other materials you have on hand and write a tutorial. You could include written instructions, photos, or videos. Not sure what craft to try? There’s lots of inspiration online. Education.com has a comprehensive collection of ideas.
• Make a Song: Create your own original song in Chrome Music Lab. Click on “Save” to get the link or embed code to publish your song in a post.
• Favorite Instrument: Do you have a favorite instrument or is there an instrument that fascinates you? Do some research and write a post about it. Add an image or video to your post if you can too.
• Make a Playlist: Write a post that includes a playlist of your favorite songs. Don’t forget to explain why you like each song and why it’s part of your playlist. Your playlist might even be for a specific occasion like a birthday party, wedding, or school graduation. You could even make a soundtrack of your life!
• Guess the Artist, Song, or Instrument: Give your readers some clues as they scroll down the page and have them guess the artist, song, or instrument. Invite your readers to put their guesses in a comment.
• Share Your Talents: Can you sing or play an instrument? Film yourself and add your video to a post. If you don’t have musical talents yourself, find someone else you can record and interview them.
• Guess That Sound: Embed some sounds from the free collection on the BBC website. Have your readers guess the sounds in a comment. Don’t forget to reply to your comments to tell your readers if they were correct. (Tip: To use the BBC sound effects, you need to link back to their site and include the word “copyright” and the year).

Reading and Writing

• Book Review: You can include a summary of the plot without spoilers, your favorite quotes, a star rating, and a photo of the book. Or maybe you could create some BookSnaps (annotated photos of text from a book).
• Book Recommendations: Create a recommended reading list for others to enjoy. Check out this list from the OJCS Library blog for inspiration.
• Poetry: There are many styles of poetry you could experiment with. Ken Nesbitt’s Poetry 4 Kids is a great site to get help with writing poems. You might also like to try a ReadWriteThink poetry interactive that guides you through the writing process then publish your poem on your blog. Tip: you need Flash enabled to use the ReadWriteThink interactives so they won’t work on an iPad.
• Expand Your Vocabulary: Improve your writing by trying Describing Words. This free web tool helps you find new words to describe nouns. Try out the tool and reflect on your discoveries in a post. There’s also a version that helps you find related words as well as a reverse dictionary.
• Change a Story Ending: Choose a well-known story (perhaps a fairytale or another classic) and publish a different ending. You can ask for feedback from readers in the comments.
• Interactive Endings: Write the beginning of a short story and invite your readers to finish it in a comment. Alternatively, you could write two different endings and have readers vote for their favorite.
• Words From Your Birth Year: Write a post about some of the words that were introduced in the year you were born according to Merriam-Webster dictionary. Include your thoughts or research on why these words were introduced in that year.
• News Report: Read information on children’s news sites like Time for Kids or DOGO News. Then summarize a news story for your readers with your own reflections or opinions included. Tip: There is even a DOGO News plugin.
• Wordless videos: Speech pathologist Sarah has compiled a list of wordless videos. You could embed one in a blog post and write a script, recount, or reflection on the meaning behind the video.
• Interactive Stories: Google Slides can be used to create interactive or “choose your own adventure” type stories. Jake Miller has made a useful GIF to explain how to do this. If you want to know how to embed your Google Slides presentation into a post, these instructions walk you through it.
• Spelling/Vocabulary: Share your spelling words or a set of interesting words you have recently come across. Define the words or create interesting sentences to share with readers. You could even use a site like Spelling City and screenshot some of your activities.
• Grammar and Punctuation: Share your understanding of a concept you’re learning to help others understand an aspect of grammar or punctuation. You could make a comic, a poster, a video, a quiz, a song, or anything else!
• Newspaper: Create your own online newspaper to share on your blog. For example, MHMS Daring School students worked collaboratively on their newspaper.
• Storyline Online Review: Watch a book being read by a professional actor on Storyline Online and prepare a book review or summary (you can embed the story in a post).
• Persuasive Writing: Make your case for an argument, for example, why dogs are better than cats, why the school cafeteria should offer a different menu, or why school uniforms are a good idea. You could write a persuasive piece about any light-hearted or serious topic you’re interested in.
• Emoji Rebus Story: Have you heard of a rebus story? It’s where some words are replaced with an image. There’s a tool called Emoji Translate that will automatically replace some of your words with emojis (you can copy your translated text/emojis back into your post).
• Language Learning: Do you speak or learn another language? Share some basic words and phrases with your audience. You could even add a voice recording or video. If you don’t have a second language, do some research and pass on what you learned. Or, write about the language you’d like to learn if you had the chance and why.

History and Geography

• Virtual Field Trips: It’s now possible to visit faraway places without even leaving the classroom. The We Are Teachers website lists 25 of the best virtual field trips to explore. Once you’ve been on your “field trip”, it’s time to review the experience.
• Global Issue: Select a global issue that you’re passionate about or interested in and write a post to share your concerns. You might want to base your issue on The Sustainable Development Goals. The 17 goals focus on things like poverty, hunger, health, education, and climate action.
• Did You Know? Use information from a website like National Geographic Kids, Simple English Wikipedia, or Fact Monster to publish your own “Did you know?” snippets around a particular topic.
• List of Items: Create a list of items that would be used in a certain time in history, by a historical figure, or in a particular location around the world.
• A to Z: Create an A to Z list of something you’re studying, for example, a certain historical event or geographical location.
• Travel Brochure: Design and publish a travel brochure for a particular geographical location. You could use a tool like Canva or Google Drawings to create the brochure and then add it to your blog as a PDF or image file.
• Venn Diagram: Choose two different people, places, or events to compare such as two historical figures, two different countries, or two historical events. Make a Venn diagram to compare and contrast. You could use an online tool like Visual Paradigm or something like Canva or Google Drawings to make the Venn diagram. Or you could draw the diagram on paper and take a photo to add to your post.
• Who Am I? Share some clues about a historical figure, for example — where and when they were born, their education, their personal life, and what they’re famous for. See if your readers can make an accurate guess in a comment.
• Guess This Place: Share some clues about a geographical location for example — the continent it’s on, the climate, famous citizens, landmarks, well-known events, the latitude and longitude. Ask your readers to share their guess in a comment.
• Historical Artifacts: Share an image of a historical object or artifact. For example, you might want to look at the public domain collection from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It includes more than 400,000 images from The Met collection that are free to use. Share some images in a post and write your own description. Or ask your readers to guess what they think the images are.
• Color History: #ColorOurCollections is a website where various institutions add historical images that can be printed and colored in. Find a page that interests you to print and color. Then add a photo of your completed work to your blog and write a description.
• Make A Timeline: Timelines can be about people’s lives, places, or historical events. Traditionally, you could make a timeline on paper but there are now lots of online tools that help you make your timeline with multimedia. Richard Byrne compares the best tools to use in this playlist. Try out one of the tools and add your timeline to a post.
• SMS Generator: Using a free tool called SMS Generator you can make fake text message conversations between two historical figures. When you’re done you can screenshot or embed your conversation.
• Old Newspaper Articles: Did you know Google has a collection of archived newspaper articles? Find an interesting article from a time or place you’re studying. Link to the article in your post and write an analysis.
• Flags: Do some research into a flag of the world or another important flags and summarise the key information. Alternatively, you might like to design your own flag. Include the image in a post with a description of your flag.
• Historical Report or Guest Author: Write a traditional report profiling a historical figure, or pretend you are a famous historical figure that is blogging about a significant event.
• Historical Stories: Authors often use a historical event as the basis of a fictional story. Create a story based on a certain time and location in history. You would keep the main historical information accurate while coming up with fictional characters and perhaps storylines.
• Personal History: Interview someone to share a little about their own personal history. Or you could even share some of your own history. Everyone has a story!
• Maps Comparison: Find two maps from different time periods that show the same location. What are the similarities and differences in the maps? Maybe some things have been added, removed, replaced, or extended. A useful website to find old maps might be Old Maps Online or The US Library of Congress.
• Time Travel: If you could live in any other place and/or time, what would you choose and why?

Math and Science

• Vocabulary: Choose a vocabulary word that you’re learning about and write a post that describes this word in different ways such as: a definition, in a sentence, in an example/image, in a table/graph, in symbols/equations. Check out this vocabulary slide deck template by Meagan Kelly which you could fill out and embed in your blog.
• Image Hunt: Look around you for examples of concepts you’re studying in class. Take photos and add them to a post. Maybe you could look for mathematical arrays, 3 digit numbers, fractions, or patterns.
• Riddles: Research some math riddles. There are some on Riddles.com and Mashup Math. After trying some out yourself, share your favorites on your blog or make up your own. Invite your readers to solve your riddles in a comment.
• Math Movies: Explaining math concepts through videos can be very effective. The students in Mr. Avery’s class share some great examples on the Math Movie Network (many years on these examples are still inspiring). Check out The Educator’s Guide to Using Video in Teaching and Learning to find out more about tools students can use for video creation.
• NRICH: The NRICH project by the University of Cambridge publishes weekly maths problem-solving tasks for students. Students can submit answers on the website, but you can also publish your response on your blog or portfolio. Problems are broken up into age groups.
• Estimations: Make some mathematical estimations such as the length of your hallway, the weight of your lunchbox, or the number of shirts hanging in your closet. Share your estimations on your blog and then measure or count to find out the actual answer. How far off were you? How did you make your estimates and how did you find out the actual answers?
• Math Journals: Use your blog or portfolio as a journal to reflect on your math learning. Here is some math journal prompts from ReadWriteThink that you could base your reflections on.
• Problem Solve: Publish a problem-solving task in a post and invite readers to provide the solution in the comments. You might get ideas for problems from a site like NRICH. Tip: choose a problem where there are multiple solutions, or hold off on moderating comments until a few readers have had the chance to respond. Maybe you could explain the answer in a follow-up post.
• Same but Different: Browse the sites Same But Different Math or Same Or Different to see lots of photos of how mathematical concepts are the same but different. Set up some photos of your own to add to a blog post and share your thoughts on how the images are similar and different.
• Solvemoji: There’s a popular site called Solvemoji.com where emojis are used in maths puzzles. Have a browse, then make your own puzzles for your readers using a tool like Google Drawings, Google Slides, PowerPoint, or Canva. Just save your creation as a PNG or JPEG and upload it to your blog like any other image. Here’s a Google Doc tutorial for this activity from Mrs. Yollis.
• Money: Learn about the currency in another part of the world and share what you learned with your readers. Don’t forget to include some images. You might be able to find some images using the Creative Commons search engine.
• Math Game Review: There are lots of interactive math games available on the web or on mobile devices. Try out a game and then share a review. Include details like how to access the game, what it helps you learn, pros and cons, and an age recommendation.
• Science Experiment: Find a science experiment in a book, online, or in a video. For example, Try This! is a series of science experiments from National Geographic Kids. With permission from an adult, replicate the experiment and then blog about it. Alternatively, you might want to make up your own experiment to learn more about something you’re curious about.
• Science Video: There are lots of great science videos online. Two examples are TED-Ed and SciShow Kids YouTube Channel. Find a video that interests you, then write a post about it. You might write a summary of the video and include your own thoughts or questions. Alternatively, you can make a quiz for your readers about the video. Invite them to answer the quiz in a comment.
• Two Truths and One Lie: Challenge your readers with a simple “two truths and one lie” quiz. Your task is to write a post that includes two correct statements and one incorrect statement. Ask your readers to guess the lie! Your statements could be about a certain math or science topic or a mix of topics.
• NASA Space Place: Check out NASA Space Place to learn more about Earth and Space. There are games, activities, articles, videos, and more. Write a post about something you learned from the website.
• Science News: There is interesting science news being reported all the time. Check out Science News Explores and find an article you’re interested in. Share a summary in your own words on your blog. You might include some follow up questions you’d like to research.
• Coding: Learning to code can be fun. There are lots of sites and apps you can use to learn to code. Code.org is a good starting place. Try out one of the activities and then write a post about it. Explain what you learned and what challenges you had to overcome to complete the activity.
• Gardening: Try growing something at home or school like a vegetable, plant, or flower. Blog about the changes in a series of posts and describe how you’re tending to your garden. The Kids Gardening website has some ideas to help you get started including the fun grass seed “chia” pet.
• Science Careers: Research a science related career and tell your readers about it. Perhaps you could even interview someone in the profession. Is this a career you’d be interested in? Alternatively, you could choose two careers and compare them in a post.
• Looking After the Environment: Share tips on how to reduce, reuse, recycle, or look after our planet. Maybe you can share some changes you’re making in your own life to be more environmentally conscious.
• Diagrams: A scientist often makes diagrams to record and communicate information. Make a diagram with labels to illustrate a scientific concept (e.g. parts of an insect, the layers of the Earth, or the water cycle). Check out Science A-Z for some examples of science diagrams. Make your diagram on paper (and upload a photo) or use an online tool like Canva or Google Drawings.

Other Web Tools

Teacher Tip: There are countless free online tools that can be used to create, publish, collaborate, and present. If you’re working with younger students, it’s important to check the terms and conditions on the site as some tools are only suitable for students over the age of 13.

• GIFs: These can be fun additions to your posts that bring your images and descriptions to life. Try an online tool like Brush Ninja or ABC Animate to make a GIF to demonstrate your learning or feelings.
• Prezi: Prezi is an online presentation and storytelling tool that uses a single canvas instead of traditional series of slides. The images, text, videos, and other objects are placed on the canvas and users can zoom in and out. Create a Prezi about something you’re interested in and add it to a post.
• Google Slides: Slides presentations are great to add to posts. The simplest way to use Google Slides is to create a slide deck. That is, a collection of slides put together to form a presentation. Learn more about how to use and embed Google Slides in this beginner’s guide.
• Animation: Produce a video with a tool like Biteable or Powtoon. Share your animation and write about the decisions you made when making the video.
• Talking Avatars: Create a speaking character using Voki to read your post or to interact with your blog’s visitors. Voki characters can be customized to look like historical figures, cartoons, animals, or yourself! Voki characters can be embedded on your site on a post, page, or sidebar.
• Word Cloud: Make a word cloud using one of these online tools or iPad apps. Add your word cloud to your blog. You could even invite readers to guess the topic.
• Jigsaw Puzzle: Instead of adding a normal photo to your post, make a jigsaw out of one of your photos on Jigsaw Planet or Jigsaw Explorer and embed it. Ask your readers to leave a comment to tell you how they went with the puzzle.
• Wakelet: Wakelet allows you to save, organize, and tell stories with content from around the web. You can sign up for free or create a quick collection without signing up. Make a Wakelet about a topic you’re studying or something you’re interested in. Embed your Wakelet in a post. Read more about getting started with Wakelet.
• AnswerGarden: This is a free online tool to get feedback on a question. You make an AnswerGarden with a question and then embed or link to it on your site. When people respond to your question, their answers form a word cloud. Learn more about AnswerGarden here.
• Comics: Create a comic using Make Beliefs Comix and share it on your blog. Your comic could be designed to educate, inform, or entertain.
• Podcasts: These are simply audio files that are published online. You might like to make a series of podcasts to coincide with a subject you’re studying or a project you’re working on. Spotify for Creators is a popular free service for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Check out The Edublogger’s Guide To Podcasting to learn more.
• Digital Bulletin Board: Padlet is an online bulletin board that you can embed in a blog post to share notes, voice recordings, videos, documents, links, and more. You can only create three Padlet walls with the free account.
• Animoto: This free tool lets you make videos that combine photos and/or video footage with music and interesting transitions. You can make an Animoto about an event or something you’re learning and embed it on your site.
• Mindmap: Create a mindmap for brainstorming, collating notes, demonstrating your learning, or presenting your findings. You might like to try a free online tool like Bubbl.us which doesn’t require an account.

How To Apply These Writing Prompts To The Classroom

As you think about using these prompts in the classroom, try to vary it up. Helping students to get out of their comfort zones and try something new might spark a new talent or passion.

It’s always worth considering how you can give some students choice in the type of posts they create. Choice can lead to ownership and higher levels of motivation. You never know what your students might produce!

One tip to keep in mind is that when you’re creating work or images using online tools, you can sometimes save your work as an image (e.g. JPEG or PNG), or embed your work, but at other times you’ll need to take a screenshot. This article by PC Mag explains how to take a screenshot on almost any device.

From a safety perspective, if you have public blogs or websites, ensure students are aware of what information should be kept private before they begin blogging. Edublogs and CampusPress users can use My Class to easily moderate students’ posts and comments before they’re live on the web.

The acronym YAPPY might help your students develop their understandings about privacy. Learn more about digital footprints in this post.

When using writing prompts, it can also be helpful to keep the SAMR model in mind.

Sometimes, you might simply be substituting traditional pen and paper tasks for an online task. As you and your students become more comfortable with publishing online, consider ways you can redefine tasks to achieve something that would not be possible without a blog, website, or online tools.

Don’t Stop Here

Hopefully this list will ensure you or your students are never scrambling for blogging ideas again, however, it is far from exhaustive.

Another idea is to recycle posts. This is what we’re doing right here! This post of prompts was first published many years ago and we’ve updated it a couple of times. You might have an old post that you enjoyed or that struck a chord with readers. Why not do an update or follow up post in a similar style? Reflect on your best content and re-purpose or repeat it.

If you have a class blog, you could create a page with writing ideas for your student bloggers.

Happy blogging!

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There are two types of bloggers.

One has a never-ending list of blog post ideas but just can’t find the time to write them all. The other wants to write more blog posts but is stuck for ideas.

Which type of blogger are you?

If you’re the latter, you’re in luck. This post offers you 7 ideas to help you find inspiration for your future blog posts.

These ideas apply to both student and teacher bloggers.

Scroll down for a printable worksheet where you can jot down your ideas as you read through the post.

(Tip: If you have the ideas but not the time, check out our Plan For Writing A Weekly Blog Post In 10 Minutes A Day).

1) What are your most popular posts?

Blogging isn’t only about writing for an audience—it’s also a powerful tool for reflection and documenting your own ideas.

That said, many bloggers find real value in connecting with an authentic audience. A smart first step is to look back and see which of your posts have resonated most with readers in the past.

If you use Edublogs Pro or CampusPress, the ideal way to do this is via Google Analytics. 

These instructions explain how to set up Google Analytics and you’ll be able to access your data via the Google Analytics website, or app.

You’ll also be able to check out a snapshot of your most popular posts by going to Dashboard > Statistics.

Once you know what your most popular posts are, ask yourself:

• What else could I write on that same topic?
• Could I break down the topic further? For example, if you wrote an overview of teaching geometry to 8th graders, could you break it down and share a sequence of detailed lesson plans, assessments, or resources?
• Is there a style of post that’s been popular with readers? Have you written some “top 10” posts or “how-to” posts or “comparison” posts that have done well? Could you write more posts in a similar style?
• Could you re-purpose some of your old content into a different format? For example, could you turn one of your popular posts into a video, slideshow, checklist, graphic, etc?

2) Poll your audience

If you’ve been blogging for a while and have built an audience for your blog, consider asking your readers what they’d like you to write about.

Google Forms is a great way to make a simple survey but there are other tools available such as Crowdsignal (formerly called Polldaddy).

Keep the survey as simple as possible so busy readers don’t feel reluctant to submit a response.

Example: Google Forms

A few years ago, one of our authors polled her own readers on her blog to find out what topics they’re most interested in. She included an option to write any other feedback (38% of readers added additional information while 62% of readers just used the checklist).

The responses and trends were insightful.

This is what the poll looked like (the poll is no longer live so this is just an image).

3) Build on someone else’s blog post

If you’re a blogger, you probably read other people’s blog posts as well. This is an important part of the blogging process. Reading other blogs not only helps you develop your thinking but helps you become part of an online community.

Have you ever read a blog post that really got you thinking? You might be left with a lot of unanswered questions or you might simply feel like you have more to add to the conversation.

You could leave a blog comment or you could expand on the topic even further by writing a blog post.

Examples

• A teacher might read a blog post about flexible seating. This teacher might be trying out some flexible seating options in their own classroom. They could write a post to share their approach along with some images.
• A student might read another student’s post about their trick for learning times tables. The student might have their own tricks they use which they could share in their own blog post.

Remember to link back to the inspiration for your blog post and when it’s published reach out and tell the blogger about it. The blogger might like to continue the conversation with you further or share your post with their own network.

4) Write a how-to

As Derek Sivers says,

What’s obvious to you is amazing to others.

It’s true! There’s a lot you know about or have had experience with. It might not seem like anything overly special but it could really help your readers.

How-to posts are often popular as they help your readers overcome their problems. Your helpful post is likely to stick in a reader’s mind and they may become a loyal and regular visitor to your blog.

How can you make a how-to post? 

• Write out the steps and include images.
• Make a video tutorial or a screencast using a tool like Loom or Screencastify.
• Make a checklist.
• Create a diagram or other type of graphic (Canva is a great tool for this).

5) Share something from your life

What’s been happening in your life lately? You don’t have to have been doing anything extraordinary to create an interesting blog post.

Have you read a book? Write a review or share some takeaways.

Have you come across an interesting quote? Share the quote with your readers and explain what it means to you.

Have you watched a thought-provoking movie, tv show, or video? Or perhaps you have listened to an interesting podcast? Tell your audience about it. How did it change your thinking? What has it left you curious about?

Have you had an interesting conversation with someone? Whether or not your conversation was on the web or in real life, is there anything you could share with your audience?

You might even reflect back on a book, quote, video, podcast, or conversation that you engaged with long ago. Why has it stuck in your mind?

6) Interview someone

Interviews with others can make interesting blog posts. You and your audience might learn a lot and gain new insights!

You can interview someone via video or an audio recording, but the simplest way to do it is by writing out the questions and answers.

Tip: Make sure the questions and answers stand out in the body of the text; use bold, dark colors, or headings.

If you’re interested in interviewing someone on your blog, here are a few steps to follow:

1. Research. Consider why you want to interview the person. Decide what sort of questions you’d like to ask them.
2. Request. Ask the person face-to-face or via a polite email and explain what you’d like to interview them about.
3. Conduct the interview. If you can meet with the person face-to-face, you might like to type their responses out as you talk to them. If not, send the questions via email and give the person a guide on how much information you’re after for each question and when you need it by.
4. Add an introduction and conclusion. Your blog post will need context so write an introduction that tells your reader about the interviewee. Don’t forget to link to the interviewee’s site if they have one. Your conclusion might include your own takeaways on what you learned or a call to action (suggesting readers visit the interviewee’s blog or follow them on social media).
5. Revise. After you’ve drafted the interview post, share it with the interviewee and ask them if there is anything they’d like to change. Tip: Public Post Preview plugin can be handy here.
6. Publish the post. Share the post with your network and invite the interviewee to do the same.

7) Use blogging prompts

Many bloggers enjoy coming up with lists of blogging prompts and these can be a great way to get ideas!

We’ve published a number of these lists on The Edublogger. Here are some for teachers and students:

• 50 Blog Post Ideas For Educators (2018)
• 50 Blog Topics And Prompts For Teachers (2017)
• 100+ Ideas And Prompts For Student Blogging (2021)

Students might also be interested in checking out the work of John Spencer. He has recently released a fantastic PowerPoint full of creative writing prompts to his community.

Check out the preview below and access the full collection of prompts here. 

John also has some excellent creative writing prompts on YouTube. Students could embed a video prompt in a post and then write their response.

Here’s an example,

Take Action — Start Brainstorming

Are you now full of ideas for future blog posts? I hope so.

Don’t let those ideas go!

Why not print off our brainstorming sheet now and jot down your thoughts?

>>Download the PDF

When you’re done, you could keep your brainstorming sheet by your desk and use your blog post ideas throughout the coming months. Or you might like to transfer your ideas to a Google Doc, diary, or editorial calendar.

Related Reading

A Plan For Writing A Weekly Blog Post In 10 Minutes A Day

5 Ways To Share And Market Your Teacher Blog

12 Tips For Maintaining Momentum With Blogging