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Susan Detrie

Teachers College, Columbia University

MSTU 4037, Spring 2013

Final Project:

More Than Blogging: Wordpress In the Classroom

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As teachers debate which web technologies may work best in the classroom

and more web tools are developed and made accessible each year, a few

existing tools stand out for having real potential to integrate with many kinds of

curriculum and in a wide variety of classroom settings. One tool in particular, a

classroom or course website, can provide students with the opportunity to

develop core skills necessary for digital and media literacy, while also learning

content they once relied predominantly on textbooks for. And for the teacher, a

class or course website provides the opportunity to collect and organize a wide

range of resources into one location, a way to supplement textbooks with current

material, a method to offer a virtual meeting place for students when not in the

classroom, an opportunity to leverage the interactive potential of commentary

and posting to carry on dialogue in and outside the class, a path to opening a

window into the classroom for invited guests and a platform for creating a real

knowledge-building space.

Today for website creation software to have true potential for classroom use, it

has to be extremely flexible, easy to work with for teachers with a wide range of

technical skills and accessible to students who may have a variety of computing

devices available to them outside and inside the classroom. Wordpress.org, the

self-hosted version of Wordpress (as opposed to Wordpress.com where your site

is hosted by Wordpress.com), is known primarily as a software for blogging

available online, but it can be easily adapted to provide interactive tools to

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enhance a face to face classroom setting or even successfully deliver an entire

class in an online format.

Though originally developed as blogging software for anyone with an Internet

connection, a computer and something to talk about, the Wordpress.org software

developers and their multitude of partners have continued to evolve

Wordpress.org tools into areas well beyond the traditional blog site most people

are familiar with. With Wordpress.org, it is possible to bring together in one

location a blog site with the inherent ability to write and comment on what is

written on the site and a traditional website with content management tools for

web pages, as well as portfolio formats for large galleries of images, videos and

photos. The website software also contains a media library to store and format

resources and has the ability to link to and from digital information of almost any

kind anywhere on the web.

In addition, it is possible to easily blend blog posts with commentary and

informational content within a traditional web menu system in a variety of formats,

potentially optimizing the overall design of a course and providing for targeted

interactivity, as well as a place for classroom writing and content of all kinds and

development tools for organizing information acquired from around the globe.

Teachers are able to incorporate videos, audio podcasts and digital images,

found online or created and uploaded, as well as Excel, Word and PDF

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documents. The dedicated media library within each site allows for upload of

digital content, sizing, labeling, tagging and formatting all within a simple and

easy to use interface that requires only basic knowledge. Teachers also have the

ability to stream live video on a Wordpress.org site from a classroom with a

webcam, allowing parents, administrators, guests and other teachers a potential

window into classroom activities.

The single most powerful aspect of Wordpress.org is that very little knowledge of

code is necessary for a teacher to set up and run a course or a classroom

specific site, and teachers are able to use a wide variety of structures and

formats without being overwhelmed with technical concerns. Wordpress.org

makes available numerous free templates for blogs, websites and hybrid sites in

dozens of layouts. Independent developers have also created Wordpress.org

templates that number well into the thousands. Currently there are so many

variations that choosing the template to create an optimal site for a class can

actually take longer than filling in some of the preliminary content to get a site up

and running. A large number of these templates are free, and those that there is

a charge for (often because they offer more special features) run in the $35 to

$55 range, putting specialized templates in reach of many budgets, even a class

that may need a specific site format to post content relevant to the curriculum.

The basic Wordpress web development tools from which these templates are

created, are considered professional enough that hundreds of commercial and

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educational sites use Wordpress, from the New York Times online blogs to

Cornell, Georgetown, USC, Harvard and Boston University websites for campus

departments, special programs and university projects.

An added bonus to using these templates is that you can build your site in one

template (or ʻthemeʼ as Wordpress.org refers to templates) and decide you want

to apply a different ʻthemeʼ or look to your site. Wordpress.org allows you to

make the switch to a new template with one mouse click, which will place all your

old content in the new template. Though a certain degree of adjustment will often

be required, it empowers a teacher to change a site look or structure from school

year to school year, as their thinking on a subject or content changes, without

rebuilding their course again from the ground up. The template or ʻthemeʼ

structure Wordpress.org has developed means a teacher will never have to

recreate entire web pages and a new menu system, or relink to resources the

teacher has collected over time for a class. Instead a teacher can repurpose and

reconfigure content, transposing material into new formats.

This particular Wordpress.org feature also allows teachers to switch to newer

templates that are optimized for viewing a Wordpress.org site on popular

technology devices like smart phones and tablets as they become available to

students. This means not all students need a computer to access content,

comment on information posted or even create a blog post. Wordpress.org has

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free apps for tablets and smart phones, which are constantly improving and

making increased access to Wordpress.org powered sites from a wider array of

technologies possible. A student without a home computer or an Internet

connection can theoretically use an inexpensive tablet with an app anywhere with

wireless access to read content, follow links and possibly post to the class site.

For teachers with dated textbooks or limited class materials, Wordpress.org can

potentially empower the teacher in providing current materials to students even

with limits on technology availability in the classroom and at home.

Figure 1. Selecting a Wordpress.org theme. Each template and third party template may be previewed with the users content. Custom features for the template can also be viewed in ʻPreviewʼ.

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Figure 2. The wordpress.org website allows for configuring mobile options for any site.

Along with the template or ʻthemeʼ structure and the ability to change a site

format and design, much of the powerful leveraging of information on

Wordpress.org sites is found in the prewritten code that is used in the form of

drag and drop ʻwidgetsʼ and ʻpluginʼ code prewritten by developers which make it

possible to numerous digital information tools to a site. With the ʻpluginʼ,

developers have written code that you can reuse by installing the plugin with one

mouse click and following the simple instructions about where to paste the line of

code the developer provides you, inside a page or post you create, and that

activates all the code in a plugin on that particular page when your webpage is

viewed online.

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Widgets also use prewritten code in the form of boxes that appear on their own

page within the administrator area of the site. To use a widget you can look up

their particular function (many are very simple and self-explanatory) and then

physically drag the widget from the inactive left side of the widget page to blank

slots on the right side of the page that are unique to the template you selected

when you chose a particular ʻthemeʼ. Widgets and plugins can add powerful

information leveraging tools to a website in the form of calendars, authorʼs names

lists (tracked from parameters the site creator sets), topics lists (tracked from

how a post or page was ʻtaggedʼ when it was created it by the site creator or

other designated authors of the site) and word clouds.

Specific widgets can also: enable a search box on the site for content, run RSS

feeds from any source, link to specific social media sites (like a class-related

YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter or Facebook page), enable interactive contact forms

which can be modified, add Google maps to the site, add photo streams from

other sites like Flickr, display recent comments pulled from all the posts to the

site, link to bookmarking sites like Delicious and allow for customized information

blocks, like up coming due dates and test dates. How many widgets a teacher

can use is based on how many slots or spaces the chosen template has for them

and teacher can place these where they want on the left or right side of a page or

at the base of the page. Many of the widgets will automatically function on all

pages of the site when they are placed. (Exceptions do exist in the variety of

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templates.) Many of the special features you see on the most popular sites are

accessible in the form of either plugins or widgets on Wordpress.org.

Figure 3. Wordpress.org allows installation, activation, deactivation and even editing and rewriting the code in a plugin from a single page in the interface.

Figure 4. Widget modules of prewritten code are made active on a users site by dragging them to slots on the right allocated in each template design.

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It is important to note at this juncture that one of the major distinctions between

the self-hosted Wordpress.org software and Wordpress.com software, which

hosts the site you create for you, is the ability to use the power of the prewritten

code found in plugins, the ability to upload your own video and audio files without

any concerns about storage capacity and the ability to access thousands of third

party templates themes created for use on Wordpress.org. Though many

teachers beginning site construction may look positively on the simplicity of

Wordpress.com for someone with little background in web technology and may

not want to understand the particulars of hosting a site, Wordpress.org can be

the best option in the long run. With the huge choice in templates and the ability

to use code that has been written already, a teacher will find they are less limited

as their understanding of working with Wordpress.org grows over time.

Also, as a teacher becomes more familiar with want they want from a course or

class site, they may find being able to access all the code for the site as well as

the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that create the structure of the site (another

core feature of Wordpress.org is access to the entire mechanics of the site) is

really helpful when then they want to modify it or have someone help them

modify the core code. Even a teacher who has no desire to learn about code will

appreciate the ability to change their site structure rather than adhere to a format

that is not working best for a class. And as more educators leverage

Wordpress.org to extend the learning space of their classrooms and create

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accessible places for knowledge building in new ways, it is easy to foresee some

of them will be writing plugins more tailored to the classroom, some of which will

inevitably become core components in education websites created by teachers.

Learning a few things in the beginning though it may seem overly complicated or

a bit overwhelming can make the classroom site vastly more functional for the

students and the teacher in the end.

Along with widgets and plugins, other major features are available in

Wordpress.org that make it extremely functional for a classroom. Wordpress.org

allows for a closed site, which can only be accessed with a password. This

allows teachers control over who can access the site and allows them to make

decisions about information that is public. A teacher is also free to select any kind

of user name for students, fully maintaining their privacy, and then grant them

access to the site in assigned roles. Wordpress.org makes available for any

given websites the assigned roles of administrator, subscriber, editor, author and

contributor.

Figure 5. All members of the site can be assigned user names and specific roles.

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A ʻsubscriberʼ is the most basic role on Wordpress.org, and each subscriber has

a profile on the site that they can manage right on the site. A subscriber can

leave comments to any posts that have comments enabled by the administrator.

A ʻcontributorʼ role also has a site profile and can leave comments on posts that

are enabled for comments, as well as upload files to the media library, write

posts, edit posts and manage their own posts. Contributors, however, are not

able to actually ʻpublishʼ a post to the site, allowing a teacher to preview a post

first before it goes live online. An ʻauthorʼ role on the site allows a participant to

actually publish a post live online and edit a post published to the site, while an

ʻeditorʼ role on the site allows a participant to review and moderate comments,

manage categories for posts, manage links, edit pages and edit other authors

posts.

Perfect in schools with younger children, for any comment posted to a

Wordpress.org site, the administrator is free to hold the comment until reviewed

by either a person in an editor role or by the site administrator before it is

published online. The assignment of roles and the ability to moderate comments

leaves the teacher with a great deal of flexibility to allow students more access

and publishing rights, as their performance warrants it. As students show

increased responsibility and digital citizenship working with a class website, a

teacher can allow students to increase their role in content creation and building

the knowledge base for the site. It also allows a teacher flexibility in letting

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students post assignments and writing exercises to the class site, without

necessarily allowing them to alter the content or structure of the site, or rework

the format in place. For advanced or older students however, more control can

be given to a class to shape content, or organize a site as a group that is building

knowledge of a subject area in a collaborative way.

Figure 6. Wordpress.org allows a teacher to select the parameters for discussions.

In many respects, the Wordpress.org software allows a teacher to provide a

constructivist learning experience for all students in a class who are searching,

compiling and organizing information. Older students may want to collaborate by

building onto the site additional pages, or reworking the format as more

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information about a subject or a project is gathered. The wide range of

information and tools a Wordpress.org site can accommodate allows for a group

with multiple interests and strengths to operate in the same learning space, and

cooperate and collaborate. Students with research strengths may find studies

and pertinent links to websites from around the globe; students who have

experience with code for the web may access the core style sheets and rework

layouts, format and pages; students interested in video may create them for the

site or compile them in blog posts or galleries on the site; students may create

podcasts or find them and incorporate them on the site; students with digital

camera access can take pictures and artists can draw pictures and upload them,

as well as work on the color, fonts and design of the site in many of the design

customization tools found in each template; and students who love to write may

fill site pages with content the students gather. As a group, students can gather

information and then decide how to organize that information as a group.

The template structure and the ease of arranging large amounts information

without a steep learning curve in the beginning of the site creation makes it

possible for students to use a Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com site to present a

single class project by building their own site. Both Wordpress.org and

Wordpress.com accommodate people without extensive skills; yet can also be

the basis for a challenging assignment for students with more advanced digital

media skills.

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For potential class activities, teachers may develop many strategies for using a

Wordpress.org or a Wordpress.com site. It is possible, for example, for a teacher

to set up a site much the way an outline is created in a more traditional class and

post instructions for information students must research and fill in on the static

pages and blog posts, either around a single topic or a cluster of topics. Or a

student may start a single story in an initial post, and then other students add to

it, one at a time, in sequential fashion, post upon post, building a larger fiction in

much the same way fan fiction sites operate. In conjunction, students could

search the web and build additional web pages that supplement the story with

photos that detail locations in the fiction, or detail history from the time period in

which it takes place and create a cultural backstory for the writers story. While

exercising writing skills, students would also be gaining skills searching for

relevant information, evaluating information they find and supporting each other

in determining what information fits.

It would also be possible to use the website to illustrate a series of science

experiments, complete with photos, relevant videos and static pages that outline

the process students used or display results with charts and graphs. Students

could also detail a community activity undertaken by a class, like a food drive or

an environmental project and then supplement that activity with information found

on the web pertaining to the science behind the activity. An students could

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search for similar activities undertaken by students in another community, linking

their website to the other students studying similar things. Many of the

Wordpress.org templates available provide ready made formats for online

magazines, news websites, image and video galleries and collections, literary

blogs and environmental projects, to name a few.

With so much potential activity, another benefit of Wordpress.org for teachers is

that it provides access to complete records on who is contributing work to the site

and when a post is added is added.

Figure 7. A central page lists the title of the post, the author, the categories it has been placed in, the tags used, dates it was published and the number of comments to the post.

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It also allows a quick view of how students have organized information through

the use of tags inserted into a special location on the page where a student

creates a post, helping the teacher to see how the student understands the

information or post they are adding.

Wordpress.org also allows the site administrator to see all incoming and outgoing

links on the entire site on one page, as well as all the static pages that have been

constructed on the website, and in the exact same way posts are logged in

Figure 7. With these tools, it easy to track what has been added, who is posting

and whether all incoming or outgoing links are appropriate and relevant to the

course content by glancing at single pages that track these features. The media

library also displays this type of information as well and provides easy access to

information about all images, video, audio and documents that have been added

to the site, including the person who uploaded the media, the date the media was

posted and where on the website the media was added. By clicking on the

thumbnail of any media in the library, it displays each media item full screen,

allowing for captions to be added, full descriptions written and editing of the

image. It also displays the size, the author or person who posted the image and

the date posted. This feature allows for a high level of organization of the entire

site and a complete way to track media throughout the site without reviewing

every page in the site. Media is easily added- or deleted by the teacher and

students with access privileges. Media may also ʻcommentsʼ by site users.

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Figure 8. The media library is easily accessible and with information about the author, the date posted, the media type and where on the site the media is located.

With the many website administrator tools a teacher does not need to spend

hours tracking and reviewing the activity of students working with the website and

the information is available through a concise, simple interface that contains

short ʻhelpʼ notation.

Overall, Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com provide breakthrough software that

has real potential for teachers and students to organize and communicate

information in a multimodal format, without the rigors of learning web

development and code. Far from the labor of posting webpages in the past,

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the simple interface and template structure lets students set up and learn

by using professional looking tools that experienced web designers

use to communicate information to an audience. Itʼs strength as a tool in the

classroom is that allows teachers and students to organize any kind of

information in ways that are relevant to the content of their curriculum, and

without technical considerations taking over and consuming much of the class

time. Students and teachers can start the process of building a site knowing very

little to start with and using the most basic formats, yet can potentially grow into

organizing and communicating far more complex information to each other or a

select audience or to the public. As a platform, website creation provides so

many entry points into media learning and literacy, it has the potential to become

a core tool, not just as a means to advance understanding technology but as

powerful organizer of classroom information that is both found around the web

and created by students and teachers.