This site is funded by http://www.kentuckyclassroom.com/ and is being developed, maintained, and administered by me, Dr. Steve Hyndman. KentuckyCassroom.org is a free website development resource for use by Kentucky teachers. The site uses a modified version of WordPress, a popular open source blogging software application, that allows anyone with basic technology skills to easily publish and maintain a website using only a web browser. If you can send e-mail, you can create and maintain a very powerful website using this software. To create your free website, simply go to the homepage of this site, click the link to create a new blog, and within seconds you”ll have your very own easy-to-use website. If you can send e-mail, you can create and maintain a very powerful website using this software. As you can see, I use the terms “website” and “blog” interchangeably here, because for the purposes of this site there is really no difference.

There are a few differences between this site and a normal Wordpress blog. Some of the major differences are:

1. The software used on this site is WordPress, but the software has been modified by me (a teacher) for use by teachers as teacher websites. I like to think of the blogs here as “safe blogs”. I’ve done a lot of modification to prevent unwanted content from being displayed on these blogs. 

2. The blog commenting features have been removed from all blogs on this site. Allowing commenting is a very popular and useful feature for a typical blog, however, in my opinion, it is not a useful or even desirable feature for a teacher website.

3. Trackback and Pingback features have been removed from blogs on the site.

4. Blog creation on this site is restricted to people who have a valid Kentucky public school e-mail address or other e-mail domain that I enter into the software.

I started this site in the summer of 2007 after teaching students, over the past four years, to use individual WordPress blogs as part of my educational technology classes. During that time I have set up hundreds of individual blogs for students, but using this site makes that process much more efficient. So, if you”re a Kentucky teacher and would like to use a free blog on this site, feel free to create one and start blogging. Please do read the terms-of-use prior to doing so and let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for improving this site.

Dr. Steve Hyndman
steve_hyndman@georgetowncollege.edu
Assistant Professor of Technology
Graduate Education Department
Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY
http://www.georgetownprofessor.net/