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News My Blog
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My Blog
By the way, in case you weren't aware, 'blog' is short for 'web log' and is really just an online diary where you post your thoughts, opinions and ideas. Ideal for me, some would say! But you know what it's like. It's one thing to chat on about something during a conversation but to sit down and type it all up and post it needs planning. It lacks the spontaneity of conversation. And then there's the problem of where to post the blog. I could just make pages here but I think proper blogging software makes the whole thing more interactive and part of a public debate. Page here can just sit, unviewed, for years - and there's no opportunity to respond, except by email. It turns out that Naace (my professional organisation) has started a blog area so I've bitten the bullet and started. Nothing much to see yet, but interestingly Gareth Davies, chair of Naace, has written a really useful piece on how to select a home for your blog. Click
here go to my blog now (opens in a new window) "Brian, Good to hear you feel it necessary to join the educational blogosphere. Where you host your blog is of course up to you, but there are a number of things you should consider: Free or not free. There are plenty of free services out there, you mention two, Blogger and Edublogs but there are others such as WordPress.com. This blog feature in Naace Communities is free to Naace members running in Elgg, and there's also Naaceblogs, which is also free to members running in WordPress. You could also consider installing Wordpress on your website space, as long as your host includes MySQL and php functionality, or pay for specific blog hosting eg. TypePad. Trust - can you trust the people running the free hosting? Eduspaces, a significant free hosting service for educators running in Elgg nearly disappeared recently, and was saved at the last moment by a charity stepping in. Blogger is owned by Google, and Edublogs is big, but is effectively run by one enthusiast in Australia backed by the sale of his system to schools and other sponsorship. Naace's services are for members, so you have to retain your membership to keep your hosting. Once you have been blogging for some time, back-up becomes a big consideration - are you willing to trust someone who is giving you something free to really look after your work for maybe years? Can you do your own back-ups just in case? Control - a free hosted service means you cannot install your own features on your blog while on your own webspace you probably will be able to install your own plug-ins. You might of course be happy with the features the host site provide and not want to go to the hassle of managing your own blog (this can be a pain when it comes to spam for example). Control comes into the equation as far as back-up is concerned as well. Other blogs on the domain name - this is all to do with community and what it is associated with. There are perhaps other blogs on Blogger you would not want to be associated with, and that Next blog>> random button at the top of the page is a difficult one as it could take your reader anywhere. Edublogs is a recognised educational community, and of course the services provided by Naace have the marque of that association. Features - this comes down to software and functionality. WordPress is the dominant open source blogging tool. Those offering free blogs using WordPress use a different version from the single user install on your own site version (MU standing for multi-user). The single user is always updated first and some plug-ins you want won't work straight away with the MU version and you have to wait for adaptation. If you use other social networking sites, then integration can be a boon. Here Blogger and WordPress.com score highly as both are very popular and other sites provide automatic integration. Interface - like any software, there are differences in interface between different services. For example, Naace Communities using Elgg has quite a sparse interface, while WordPress is more sophisticated but is still simple to use. Incidently, you don't have to use the provided interface for your hosting service to blog. I use tools in the Flock browser mostly to post to multiple blogs on Naaceblogs (ie. Wordpress MU). I then take the RSS feed from my main blog into Naace Communities (Elgg), so it appears in here as well without further work. Flock also allows you to save your post locally, which is a boon when you don't have internet access or your connection is irratic at a venue. Speed and space - There is nothing worse than slow hosting when you want to post, so investigate how quick the host service is, and the amount of space it provides. While text is fine, hosting video etc won't be often on free blogging sites. Here look for features that allow you to integrate video easily from other popular and free video streaming sites such as YouTube and Blip.tv. Check other blogs on the hosting service to see how well this seems to work on other people's blogs. Gareth" |
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