<Blogging 101>
Blogs, A Brief Background
Blogs (short for weblogs) are simply web pages that are typically updated frequently and archived in reverse chronological order. When blogs first became popular, many thought they were inane and yet another example of the lack of privacy/exhibitionism in the new millennium. However, this opinion has slowly changed as blogging has moved from just online journals or diaries to informational/entertainment sites on all sorts of topics.
In fact, most blogs now have a singular topic or focus, such as the incorrect use of a word, politics, feminism, finances, or even shopping for your kids. Many businesses with an online presence have a blog, too. Blogs have increasingly played a role in politics and as alternatives or a check and balance for mainstream media because anyone with a computer can, potentially, reach the same audience as, say, CNN with their blog.
Blog Style
After reading blogs for awhile, one can tell that it is a unique genre that takes advantage of the affordances of the web and is limited by the reader's online reading tolerance. Thus, most posts are brief, usually no more than 300 words, often only a few sentences or two. Longer posts have frequent paragraph breaks and headers. Many posts contain images or video links.
Almost all posts contain links. The links are different than websites in one significant way. In good web design, you make sure your viewer knows where a link will take him or her. If you want to direct a reader to a list of tips for blogging, you might write:
Problogger has a good top ten list on blogging at: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/30/tens-tips-for-writing-a-blog-post/
Blogs would do it more like this:
There are many opinions about how to write a blog post.
While it is true that blogs are public, there are so many blogs and web pages that it is actually difficult to find ones that you know exist if you don't have a direct URL. In my spring 2006 English 604 class, we all started blogs on the same topic (I think we picked cupcakes) and, as an experiment, we tried to find one another's blogs. (We didn't use our names.) It was impossible even using blog search engines like technorati and google blog search. So in theory you are writing for the whole wide web, in practice, you're writing only for those who know you are blogging.
Another important feature of blogs is the ability for readers to comment. In this way, blogs are written by both the author and the readers. Bloggers often ask for particular types of comments or respond to readers' comments in subsequent posts.
Start Your Own Blog
There are several sites you can use to start a blog. Many are free for the basic account at least. Most are incredibly easy to use and require no web programming knowledge. It is quite possible to get an entire class to set up individual blogs and begin posting and customizing in about 20-30 minutes.
Popular Blog Creation Sites
Blogger: a Google product at: http://blogger.com
WordPress: http://wordpress.com
TypePad: http://typepad.com
BlogHi: http://bloghi.com
Edublogs: blogs for educators at http://edublogs.org/
Xanga: http://xanga.com
LiveJournal: http://livejournal.com
Why pick one over another? Some allow private posting. Some allow collaborative blogs--more than one author. Some have easy drag and drop features which are pretty groovy--polls, counters, widgits. I wouldn't pay for a blog unless you've been at it for over a year and need the features only available for cash. It also seems completely appropriate to have all of your students use the same program so that you can troubleshoot with them.
More advice is available at: http://www.squidoo.com/blogstarter
Personalize Your Blog
Most of the blogging sites allow you to customize the theme and layout of your blog. If you've got some web know-how, you can also usually alter the code or custom write the code to make your site look and work exactly how you like. You can also add widgets or more widgets or search for more widgets.
Today's Task: Begin a Blog
See handout for using blogger.
