Just thought I’d post a comprehensive guide to blogging for Drama and Theatre teachers and students, using the popular WordPress platform. I distributed this guide to a small group of people as part of a presentation I gave at the Drama Australia Conference in November 2009, but posting it here on The Drama Teacher will allow more people to use it.

I highly encourage student blogging in Drama. These days, I have replaced the traditional drama journal or paper workbook in my senior Drama classes with online blogs. Under my direction, my students maintain blogs for short periods – just for the duration of a performance project. Individual blogs are kept during the development of solo and monologue performances, while small group blogs are kept during the rehearsal period of ensemble performances and plays.

The following guide covers technical aspects on how to set up a free WordPress blog on the web, suggestions for how students can use blogs in a drama or theatre program at school and tips on how to make a blog public only to those who know the web address, while keeping it blocked by search engines to protect students’ privacy. The guide is too long to post in full, so instead you can download it as a 6-page pdf below.

Any comments or feedback on the guide are welcome.

Happy Birthday to The Drama Teacher, even if i say so, myself

This humble little blog began in February 2006 on the Blogger platform. A little over two years later, I moved everything over to WordPress. Along the way, readers have survived my impatience changing the themes (skins) on this blog a bit too often (sorry).

But most importantly, 4 years on we have a dedicated Drama community reading and adding comments to The Drama Teacher on a regular basis. It’s home will always proudly be Melbourne, Australia, but the essence of Drama and Theatre teaching has commonalities the world over, making the content of this blog relevant to us all.

The Drama Teacher is likely to remain a passionate, but part-time interest for me. If I weren’t teaching Drama full-time on weekdays during the academic year, I’d have little to post on this blog, so it all makes sense.

I’ll continue to post about theatre styles, education issues, industry news, acting and more, as often as I can through 2010. I’m interested if there are areas you would like me to cover more often on this blog. Post a comment and let me know.

I won’t forget to regularly post about the joys of our wonderful profession. After all, I’m sure you’d agree Drama teaching is the best job in the world. If I had my time all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Thanks for being a part of The Drama Teacher so far. I look forward to your continued support in the future.

Justin Cash