John’s stuff

The purpose of this post is to see if this post will show up in Google Reader. the feed reading software.

created @ at wordle.net.

What does a blog do that an essay doesn’t

1. It lends it self to updating over time a little like a diary or journal. Using the calendar widget the reader can easily get to a post that has been created on any date.

2. It is interactive. You or other readers can leave posts. (You can determine if only registered users e.g. your class can leave posts and whether posts must be approved by the blogger before publishing) Collaborative learning etc.

3. It can contain images, videos and audio (up to 100mb) and links. Pupils can link to other blogs or other pages on the internet. It can have an attractive design that is customisable.

4. It can be read and written outside of school.

5. At the moment it’s a bit different.

6. There is something called the “blogosphere” this is the worldwide network of blogs. Bloggers post comments on other peoples blogs and include links to their own blog. You can easily end up sharing knowledge and experience with someone blogging on the other side of the world or even Wigan.

There are some video tutorials available to help you with edublogs.org. 

The first video is an overview of edublogs including a quick guide to dashboard (the area of your blog where you can create new posts, change the design  and manage posts etc.

The second video shows you how you can create new user accounts.

They can be found on Subjects on T>Blogging

One of the first decisions you perhaps need to make is whether you want the simplicity of the blogs built in to moodle or the more advanced features of a blogging site such as edublogs.org

Are your students going to have a blog each or one blog per class?

Perhaps they are going to engage in group work. If this is the case you may have one blog per group.

You might then want to get involved in different user roles. More detail about this is available here

This is my third post and as you can see it is much the same as my previous posts. Except this one also contains am image. I can have up to 100MB worth of storage for my files.

This is an example of a blog post.

It’s just a load of text but could also contain links

or other exciting things, like images.

There is the option of having comments so teachers or other pupils can get involved.