A Blog or Weblog is a website where entries are written by one or more authors in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs and is very useful for a class blog.
Blogs are reshaping our environment. They are beginning to emerge in large numbers in the educational field and offer great potential to transform learning and teaching. It is about new literacies appropriate for this time where students can be involved in a more interactive way.
The video (screencast loaded onto 'You Tube') is from Blogger itself to show how easy it is to set up a blog :
Engaging Others :
Blogging is about connecting with and hearing from anyone who reads your work and cares to respond. With Blogger, you control who can read and write to your blog — let just a few friends, a class or the entire world see what you have to say!
Library staff have been involved in use of blogs including :
1) Peel Campus Library
2) DEALT (Drop everything and learn technology) for 23 Things
3) 23 Things (library staff have been completing the 23 tasks this semester)
Blogger Comments let anyone, anywhere, offer feedback on your posts. You can choose whether you want to allow comments on a post-by-post basis, and you can delete any comments you don't like.
Designing :
Access Controls let you decide who can read and who can write to your blog. You can use a group blog with multiple authors as an excellent communication tool for small teams, families, a class and other groups. Or as a single author, you can create a private online space for collecting news, links, and ideas, to keep to yourself or share with as many readers as you want.
Templates — the collection of templates will get you started with an attractive site right away without you having to learn any HTML, though Blogger also allows you to edit your blog's HTML code whenever you want.
Custom colours and fonts — When you're ready to take the next step, you can further customize the templates to create a design that perfectly reflects you and your blog.
Drag-and-drop page elements — Blogger's simple drag-and-drop system lets you easily decide exactly where your posts, profiles, archives and other parts of your blog should live on the page.
Use of Blogs in classrooms
For more information, advice and examples see DET's links.
If you want more :
Create your blog using wordpress.com or edublogs.org instead. It is as simple to create as a blogger blog, but there is much, much more you can do with it if you tweak a bit.
