Starting an educational blog (workshop)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

September 30, 2004 [6683 views]

This was a workshop session run for 25 Australian and New Zealand teachers to get them started in the use of simple blogging tools. The aim was to give them a test of the technology and encourage them to create something that they could continue back at their schools.

Lets start a blog right now!

1. www.blogger.com
2. Login
3. Press “start a new blog”
4. Choose a look
5. Paste first article
6. Publish
7. Done!

Or is it?

8. Publicise it
9. Write regularly
10. Monitor progress

Make some decisions

• Write it alone or with a small group

Small groups offer mutual encouragement but can result in a less focussed blog

• Decide who the audience will be (write a profile)

A specific group of learners
Open or closed blog - will your blog be available to everyone on the Internet?
Open or closed commenting - will comments be published automatically or need approval?

• Decide how this will compliment other activities you are engaging the learner in
• Decide what the topic will be
• Decide on your software/platform

Choosing blog software

Here are a few of the blogging software tools that you could use:

Blogger.com
Typepad.com
Xanga.com
Sparkpod.com
Livejournal.com

• What will affect your choice?

1. Cost - many are free
2. Community - look at the style of posting in the blogs hosted with the same tools?
3. Design - can you achieve the look and feel you want?
4. Functionality - does the system give you what you want?
5. Ease of use - this is often a personal preference

Things to do

• Remember that this is an experiment and that you can start again
• Read plenty of blogs
• Make a note of what you like about them or dislike
• Learn to comment – its not as easy as it looks
• Explore the blogosphere - Look out for trends and happenings (quizzes, surveys)

• Recognise different types of posts

1. Diary entries
2. Signposting
3. Summaries “10 ways to”
4. Commenting
5. Book or music reviews
6. Articles
7. Search engine magnets
8. Photostories

• “Choose” or develop a voice

1. Factual and informative
2. Expert
3. Conspiratorial
4. Ranting
5. Informative
6. Story telling

• Write offline
• Keep at it!

Specific features of educational blogs

• Explanations
• Commenting
• Discussion
• Moderation
• Downloadable documents
• Polls

Potential problems and pitfalls

• Comment Spamming - this is just like email spam and afflicts most large blogging tools
• Inappropriate comments - moderation is essential
• Unsigned comments - we insist on an email address for all comments
• Use of images - we don't allow commenters to post images
• Gaining an audience - takes time
• Copyright - remember that images and text belong to their creators

Strategies for drawing an audience

• Write interesting content
• Write useful content with a long shelf life
• Write content that people will comment upon
• Write regularly
• Find a cloud of similar blogs
• Point at them
• Comment on their postings and leave your URL behind so that they and their audience can come back
• Set up an RSS Feed
• Understand Google

1. Importance of inbound links
2. Importance of titles
3. Importance of keywords

• Understand your stats - Visitors, page impressions, hits, referrers and search terms

• Add a signature at the end of every email
• Construct viral compoents
• Keep at it!

Encouraging learners to blog

• Blogging is harder than it looks
• Many people feel they have nothing to say -Sell it as a diary
• Aggregate their blogs into a school or class blog
• Provide blogging time
• Give credit for good postings

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