Blogging
What is Blogging?
Blog is short for weblog which is where entries are shown on a website in reverse chronological order, they are a bit like an online diary – but are often used for information, news or just highlighting weblinks / resources etc. Photographs and video can be added to blog entries as well as text and links can be made to resources such as word documents / powerpoints for use in the educational context. There are some good ideas in this article on “Ways to use Weblogs in Education”
Check out this Wikipedia article for a better understanding of what is meant by Blogging.
Blogging Articles / Guides:
BBC Quick Guide – Blogs and Blogging
Setting up an Educational Blog (article from Doug Belshaw – TeachingMrBelshaw.co.uk)
Blogger – free automated blogging publishing tool
Blog Basics – Learn how to keep an online Journal (Windows)
Blogs and Education – an American site – filled with information / resources for blogging and education
There are many useful resources on blogging – here’s some to get you started:
See in particular http://www.ablogsnotjustforchristmas.blogspot.com/ – which includes an excellent presentation on Blogs, given by Val Vannet at the 2007 SAGT conference.
Guides to setting up a Blog:
Having run an INSET course for school colleagues on this I have written a guide to setting up your own wordpress blog:
- Starting A Blog – Setting up Your Own Blog – A teacher’s guide to setting up and running an educational blog
- Other INSET materials looking at blogs, including a powerpoint can be found here https://igeog.wordpress.com/ict-trainingst-ivo/blogs-and-wikis/
Setting up a Blogger Blog:
- John Barlow, a geography teacher from Archbishop Blanch’s School has also written an excellent guide to setting up a Blogger blog that can be downloaded from here
BLOGS AND BLOGGING – An Introduction..
- Quick guide – Blogs and Blogging http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5283248.stm
- Blogger http://www.blogger.com/start – For more details see – Blogger – The Amazing Website Machine http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42372
- There is a useful tutorial for starting up a blog on blogger on Andrew Field’s Revise ICT site – http://www.reviseict.co.uk/blogging/
- Word Press http://wordpress.org/
- Blogs make Links Easy (based on experimentation by Musselburgh Grammar School on the use of Blogs) – by Ewan Mcintosh
- Blogs to support Education
- All About Blogs
- How do I write a blog or make a podcast
- ICT IN Education – Blogs
- Digital Learning – pods and blogs
Blogging Tools
- Blogger http://www.blogger.com/start – For more details see – Blogger – The Amazing Website Machine http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42372 – also there is a useful tutorial for starting up a blog on blogger on Andrew Field’s
- Word Press http://wordpress.org/
- Live Journal http://www.livejournal.com/
- My Blog Site http://www.myblogsite.com/
- Xanga http://www.xanga.com/
- Windows Live Spaces http://spaces.live.com/
Blogs – Adding Content / Widgets
- Clustr Maps (mapping visitors) – http://clustrmaps.com/
- Amazing Counters (counter) – http://www.amazingcounters.com/
- Slideshare (upload and share powerpoints) – http://www.slideshare.net/
- Rock You (photosharing / online photo show- http://www.rockyou.com/
- Vizu (Web polls) http://www.vizu.com/
- 4Shared – Online File Storage – http://www.4shared.com/
- Weather Pixie (graph showing weather around the world) http://weatherpixie.com/
- Scribd (putting word documents online) http://www.scribd.com/
- Animoto (make your own professional looking video shorts for free (longer videos can be made at a small cost) http://www.animoto.com/ (videos can be embedded into the blog)
- Gismoz – create animated characters / videos for your blogs (with voice overs) http://www.gizmoz.com/create/general
- Voki – create your own talking virtual characters for embedding in blogs http://www.voki.com/
MoBlogging
This is where a mobile device, such as a mobile phone is used to post to a blog – this has great potential – for example during fieldwork both in the UK and abroad.
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Weblogs Get Upwardly Mobile – Guardian News Article
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Experiments in Moblogging (Geography Fieldwork) – Noel Jenkins – Digital Geography
Examples of Educational Blogs:
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Teaching.MrBelshaw – news resources and ideas for teachers (written by Doug Belshaw, a history and ICT Teacher)
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Geography Fieldtrip Blog – trip to Iceland (by Val Vannet of Dundee High School) – prior to the trip used to keep students and parents informed, during trip posts added for parents and after trip used to feedback to students and parents / show photographs
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ICT in the Geography Curriculum – highlighting innovative uses of the newest technologies
- Blogging Links
igeog 
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