Sunday, January 13, 2008

What, Why, & How to Blog

Blogging 101 - How to get started

What are Blogs?
Definition of a Blog: Here I give you some of the best definitions across the web from google and wikipedia

Video: Blogs in Plain English: Watch this 3 minute video that gives an excellent explanation about blogs

Anatomy of a Blog:
Here I found some great diagrams and images that label and explain all the main components of a blog and a post that help you understand how blogs are set up so you can better navigate them.

What Blogs Aren’t: Read about the difference between Blogs and Websites, Discussion Boards, Social Networks, and Wikis

Why Blog?
Blogging Turns 10yrs Old!: This is a voice thread (power point slide with voice comments) that Steve Hargadon set up that celebrates blogging by having educators around the world comment about why they blog

Why I Switched From a Class Website to a Blog:
This is a post I wrote explaining my rationale for switching from a class website (web1.0) to a class blog (web2.0).

How to be a Blogger?
How to Get Started with Google's Blogger: Everything you need to get set up and started to create your own free blog in minutes

Blog Rules & Contract: I believe it is very important to clearly set up your expectations and guidelines to make sure blogging is fun and safe for kids, here are my rules and contract

How to Enter the Edublogosphere: Finding Good Edublogs to Read: This is a post I wrote giving tips on how to enter the education blogging community and finding good blogs to read.

How and Why to Comment on this Blog: Is a post I wrote for my students on commenting

Beating Blogger’s Block: Blog Starters & Styles: A slide show explaining the different types of blog posts that help you to get started with writing your blog posts.

Sharing the Path to Building this Blog: This is list of some of more advanced customizations you can make for your blog (Coming Soon)

See Also
I Would Like to Share My Class Blog Now: Here you can check out my first elementary class blog

See all my posts on blogging here

See all my bookmarks and research on blogging here

This has been a part of the following series:

A Teacher's Tour Guide into the New Read/Write Web2.0 Series

What Blogs Aren't

Round 1
Blogs vs Website The biggest confusion. See also this good discussion on this topic and Why I Switched From a Class Website to a Blog

Round 2
Blogs vs Discussion Boards How discussion boards are evolving to live conversations with blog posts and comments

Round 3
Blogs vs Social Networking Too often people confuse the two and blogging gets a bad name from myspace


Round 4
Blog vs Wiki? Best distinction I have heard are Blogs are for opinion and wikis should be for facts

Anatomy of a Blog

If you click on this link you will open a big picture of a screen shot of what a blog looks like where you can zoom in and read all the different labels of the anatomy of a blog. Very helpful! Source marbyonline.org

Next click here for the anatomy of blog post with some key vocab.