Blog Post 3

Classroom Educational Blogs 

"What Works and Doesn't Work"

An Educational Blog that WORKS

          
              This blog is called "Primary 1 Blog - Step into the World of P1." What works for this specific blog, as far as design goes is its simplicity. There really aren't any theme colors or designs everywhere, but there are many pictures of students and their art work. I appreciate this blog because it is student focused and celebrates the student's lives. For example, the teacher posted an article wishing student's a happy birthday, as well as welcoming new students to the school and making them feel loved and welcomed. This blog is a perfect example of the statement, "less is more." The design is also easy to follow and understand. There is an area on the side of the blog that separates and organizes categories from events to physical education to science and math. A school calendar is posted and informs parents when there is no school or a field trip to remember. There is also a floating word picture that allows to to click on an event that you're interested in hearing more about. I clicked on "book week" and it took me to a page with valuable details I need to know and in the form of a video. The text is easy to read and organized neatly. In addition to the appealing design, the content is also well done. The teacher talks about students and informs parents on how their child is performing in the classroom through their art work and crafts and basic subject areas. Overall, in my opinion, this blog meets the requirements that the "5 Vital Design Tips" handout has to offer. It is clean, focused, shows many photographs and videos, has a simplistic color scheme, and has easy to read text. 

An Educational blog that NEEDS WORK

             This blog is called "Middle Matters" and it is for 3rd and 4th graders in Melbourne, Australia. Some areas that this blog needs to change or work on is the background design. It is very distracting from the text on the page and the designs and bold orange colors makes it feel like there is too much happening and my eyes have a hard time focusing in on one thing. The teacher added a lot of glitter and glam to the page and sparkly, blinking words. I find this not only to be distracting, but also in favor of female students. It makes me wonder what the 8 and 9 year old boys think of having shining pink words and stars floating around. Another area that needs a little changing are the colors of the text. They are a mix of orange, blue, red, green and purple and are randomly highlighting certain headings or words in the text. It might be a better idea to be more consistent with your colors and use only 2 or 3 different ones that go well together. Color is great in an Elementary blog, however, it should be organized and make sense. 
            
            Another area that is equally important to the design of the page is the content. They isn't a large portion of text on the page, but the content that is there is mostly a description of a video or picture. There isn't an area that gives more detail about what they are doing daily in the classroom but there are videos from students about poetry. It is a great idea to display student's art work and ideas for all to see, however, posting all the videos is taking up all of the pages space and taking away white space, as well as room for other content. There is really a lack of depth to the blog and everything falls only into two different columns. I would suggest to this teacher to take away anything blinking and sparkly, choose only 2-3 colors, and to add more descriptions about the classroom and the improvements student's are making so far. Parents love to see how their kids are gaining more knowledge and understanding!