Facebook for School!

I think I mentioned the program ‘My Big Campus’ on this blog a little while ago, but I finally had the chance to put it into action this week in my classroom! The kids seem excited about it. One student exclaimed ‘This is like Facebook for school!’’

The first project we will be doing with this program is……you’ll never guess it….but blogging! I wanted my students to start blogging to design a digital portfolio of sorts via Edublogs (a WordPress program); however in order to make the students’ information and work private, I would have had to pay or the school would have to purchase a license :/.

I went to training for the My Big Campus program shortly after my blog project was derailed, and I realized that the My Big Campus profile allows you to have a blog through the program and it is totally private. Score!

Screen Shot of home page and ‘wall’.

Screen shot of profile

So this week students started gathering work to put on their digital portfolios. Students have to pick three pieces we’ve done so far:

1, 1 of 4 essays we’ve completed  (I know, 4 essays in 3 months, I’m mean)

2. A quiz, classwork or homework

3. A close read article with questions.

First, they will write a reflection about the piece based on these three questions:

- Why did you decide to include this piece?

-How did the piece allow you to grow as a student?

-What skills did you learn while completing this piece?

Then, they will either take a picture of the work and upload it on the My Big Campus blog, or copy and paste their paper from the word document into the blog. Finally, they will type their reflection under it and publish the post. When they are done they will have three separate blog entries that will serve as a digital portfolio and showcase of the work they’ve done this year. I’m hoping parents can also go on to access the student’s work.

Screen shot of sample ‘blog page’. I was showing this to students yesterday to demo what they would be doing. The picture came up sideways.  on

Sample ‘reflection’. I was sharing this with them to get them to see what the reflection would look like.

With the My Big Campus program, you can also post announcements like homework and reminders, create tests and quizzes to assign to students, and hold forum-type discussions.

Assignments Page

Track students’ progress

I can’t wait to see what else I can do with this! It’s the first year so I’m sure as the students and I get more familiar with it it will be easier. Of course there’s the conversation that has to be had regarding what is appropriate for students to post, how to use it ethically, etc., that needs to happen. I’m sure I’ll run into students who want to abuse the privileges….

Question: How do you feel about the idea of a "Facebook for School”? Important tool or breeding ground for inappropriate behavior?

Tags: classroom, lessons, my big campus, school, technology