A lot of primary schools now use WordPress blogs as their school website. Usually the ICT coordinator updates this with news and events. What I would like to see happening is all teachers within the school adding posts with pictures of their pupils activities. I would also like to see pupils doing this. To facilitate this I suggest that the ICT coordinator use the free blog publishing tool Windows Live Writer to update the WordPress blog. Windows Live Writer has a similar user interface as Microsoft Word, so most teachers should be familiar with this. To get started one needs to download Windows Live Essentials XP orWindows Live Essentials 2011 ( for Vista and Windows 7) and install Windows Live Writer and Windows Photo Gallery. Windows Movie Maker may also be of some use. I would install these programs on every class computer/laptop so that a teacher or pupil from each class would be able to update the school website/blog easily and quickly.
- Prior to installing these programs you will need to ensure that the XML-RPC setting is ticked on your WordPress blog.
1. Go to Settings – Writing
2. Tick the XML-RPC setting
- Install Windows Live Writer and choose to manage a WordPress blog.
- When typing in the username and password tick the Remember my passwordbox. To keep track of which class has been updating the blog you could create a different username and password for each class. This is not essential, but allows you to track blog posts. By having the username and password remembered no pupil will have access to these. For security each classroom computer should have a login password.
- You are now nearly ready to go. Just follow the steps below.
1. Choose YES here.
2. Press Finish
- Perhaps every teacher will not warm to this idea, but maybe one or two will add photos of the pupils work, educational trips or any other activity that they wish to post to the blog. As well as making the ICT coordinators job easier it allows teachers and pupils to learn new ICT skills. By using a blog publishing tool you are also able to create blog posts even when the broadband service is down and you can upload them when it returns.