Final Project - Blogging the Book Club

Intro: I am the sponsor for a student book club at UHS. Participants in the book club have repeatedly expressed a desire to have a place online where members could interact and post comments relating to the book we are reading at any given time.

I have used the Google-owned blogging service Blogger to create a blog for the book club at my high school. The UHS book club blog can be viewed by clicking here. It is linked on the web site for the book club is on the web site for my library.

School officials, including me, want to be sure that student security is maintained, therefore only registered users will be able to post comments on the blog. Each user will be reminded to give out NO identifying personal information on the blog. Currently, the security on the blog is such that only registered users may post comments, though anyone may read the blog. This should provide a level of transparency (any parent, administrator, etc. can see what is being posted) along with the safety of preventing strangers from interacting with the blog. Another option would be for me to enable comment moderation--where I would have authority to check posts before publishing them.

At the next meeting of the book club, I will discuss the blog with club members. We will discuss security concerns of the district. I will check with members how they feel about registering to post comments.

I want to get this project up and running and figure out the kinks and then present it to my administrator who will have final authority on whether it will continue or not. I foresee that the security concerns will be the primary issue and so I want to have these working as smoothly as possible before continuing.

Once members get going, maintenance will require me to consider tweaking security issues--registered commenting, moderated comments, open v.closed public display, etc.