Easy Gathering of Student Blog Posts

Blog posts are an important way for students to share a response to what they are learning. When I taught junior high, we wrote many blog posts:

For a year or so, I read students’ blog posts through an RSS reader. I liked that because I could easily tell when someone wrote a random blog post.

However, there were times when a blog post was an assignment, and I wanted to make sure every student turned it in by a certain time. The RSS reader was not as helpful in that situation. When I had given an assignment, my reader feed was always full, and it wasn’t easy to see which posts were from the assignment at hand.

It was then that I discovered I could use a Google Form to collect URLs from their assignment. I would tweet out the link to the form using our class Twitter account, which they would find by going to our @KrebsClass Twitter page–they didn’t need their own account. Students could easily find the tweet on the Twitter page, click on the link to open the Google form, and fill it out simply by writing their name and adding their link to the current blog post assignment. A new form was made for each assignment. (Here’s good help, if you don’t yet know how to get started with Google Forms.)

Here’s an example of one of the forms we used:

My Genius Hour Blog Post

It’s fun to edit the response students will see after they submit:

Blog Post Response

After they all filled out the form, I had the URLs all in one place. It was very helpful to have a clickable list of responses on a spreadsheet. I could read through the assignments so much easier this way!

Please leave a comment and share other ways you use to organize your blog post assignments!

BONUS POST: Read on if you need a little help formatting the spreadsheet from the Google Form.

The default location for the students’ responses in a Google Form is a Google Spreadsheet with the name of your form followed by:  (Responses). When you first see the “Responses” spreadsheet, the columns are all the same size and ordered according to the time stamp. This is fine for seeing what time students turned in their blog post, but I preferred it in alphabetical order to simplify record keeping for me.

So, to format it, highlight all the information in all three columns:

GH Blog Post highlighted

 Next, click on Data and Sort Range.

GH Blog Post Sort Range

 

Then click on sort by: Column B (or whatever column you wish to sort):

GH Blog Post sort by Column B

GH Blog Post Column B choice

Now the links are in alphabetical order by student name.

Finally, if you prefer this view, you can stretch out the columns so everything fits nicely.

And voilà, you can easily enjoy your students’ blog posts!

GH Blog Post final

Thanks for reading! I hope something was helpful. As I said above, please leave a comment if you have other ideas for organizing and keeping track of your students’ blog posts.

8 thoughts on “Easy Gathering of Student Blog Posts

  1. Hi Denise,

    This is a fabulous post linked to great examples, with step-by-step instructions for how to easily manage online content through Google Forms.

    I will add the URL to your post on my post.

    Thanks so much for taking the time to create this fabulous post!

    Kind regards,
    Tracy

  2. Great idea. Opens up a lot of doors for collecting all sorts of electronic assignments.

    1. Yes, Scott, thanks for the comment. It’s making me wonder what else? It’s good to transfer learning, and consider how it can help with something else. Hmmm…

  3. Hi Denise,
    Just how I collect the class and student participants for the student blogging challenge. Because I sort by age, I just click on top of that column and click on ascending or descending. Other data stays with the age so the whole document will sort via that age column.

    1. Thanks, Sue, that’s right! I’m sure I was inspired by your student blogging challenge without even consciously thinking it! Great idea! Like Scott said, it opens doors for collecting all sorts of data. (And I like how you can embed a spreadsheet like you did in the Student Challenge link I added.)

  4. Thanks Denise. I have been trying to figure out a way to do this easier myself so I don’t need to keep going back to “find” their posts. I think I could use this to go more paperless with other assignments too – google docs could be submitted the same way – couldn’t they?

    1. Valerie,

      I’m glad you got an idea to help! There would be another step with Google Docs, so I always liked to do this. That way you never have to go back and remind a couple students to share their essay with you…

      Have students create and share with you a folder in their Drive that has their name just like you want it for organizing. Lastname_FirstName_Period2_Classof2017, for instance. (I like to use “Class of” because then they are good until graduation. With a little tweak, they can be used by next’s years’ teachers, as a portfolio of sorts.)

      Once they share that folder, they don’t have to remember to share each document with you, they just have to create it (or later put it) in their folder and you will have access to it.

      They won’t be able to just send the URL, like they would with a blog post, unless they have shared it with you. If it’s in their folder, then the link will work and you could have them share it on a Google form if you need them all together like the blog post.

      I hope that might help you go a little more paperless! I shared a sample Google Folder with you. Did you get it?

      Denise

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