Student Blogs

This year, I have had the students set their individual blogs to private (out of a heightened sense of security on behalf of parents). However, I have expanded some of the blogs my class is participating in this year. They helped with the design aspects and many of them are already beginning to blog on them. These are all in the beginning stages, but here are a few of them so far:

Cooking with Culture - Food is a major part of people's culture, so I'm allowing students to post a recipe and describe how it connects to their culture.
Expanding Voice - It's a literary magazine, with poetry and stories. So far, it's pretty sparse, but it's picking up.
Face the Issues - Nothing is online yet, but it all will be online in a few days. We'll also be embedding interviews we do with representatives, non-profits, etc. This one deals with political issues and this current election in particular.
Our Social Impact - This keeps track of some of the service projects we are doing. Students create little write-ups telling people what we are doing.
The Social Voice - We now have other Social Voice Blogs, including Social Voice Art, Social Voice Videos and Social Voice Discussion Zone. We are considering consolidating the Art, Videos and Articles into one big blog and then linking each post to The Social Voice. Also, some students have come up with some cool re-design ideas and I'm excited about the potential.
Voices of the Border - This blog is basically a bunch of interviews with immigrants. We only have twelve so far, but we should be adding a bunch of new ones over the next few weeks.

Next Quarter
Living History Museum - We'll be doing interviews, finding sources, etc. about the time period between the Great Depression until now.
Maryvale Voice - This will be a local blog dealing with issues in our surrounding area.
Meaningful Math - Students have already begun doing polls, creating graphs and actually using math in connection to social issues. I know, it's strange to be supporting anything math-related.
Science in Life - This will deal with the intersections between science and social studies. I'm not sure how it will turn out.
Borman Astros - Basically a small online student newspaper.
Borders Play