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Thing 3 - Blogging

Thing 3: Blogging: Webcam Conversation

What is a blog ?

Blogs are just easy ways to publish online. You can insert images or movies or just use text.

Blogs are like news sites, with the author and their subscribers deciding what constitutes news.

This clip from the Commoncraft Show, Blogs in Plain English explains it very well.

Blogs are used as:

• conference sites, NCCF Conference Blog ,
• church home pages, St John’s Episcopal Church
• to communicate with students, MCC128: Screen Production 1
• an online dictionary, money terms .

Blogs are typically made up of small chunks of information called posts (every time you call a post a “blog”, somewhere a blogging fairy dies, so please don’t do it). Blogs often have sidebars with information about the author and ways to find information in the blog quickly. They usually allow comments.

Why are we learning about blogs?

They are great for reflective learning, which is how we will use them here.

You will be able to comment on each others’ blogs, so they can be very social ways of communicating.

Blogging also helps you understand how to create an online “voice” and ways that you can present yourself online.

Your blog is the centre of this programme and most exercises from now on will involve posting to your blog.

What you need to do to complete this Thing

1. Set up your blog and make your first post.

2. Email Kathryn ( k.greenhill@murdoch.edu.au ) with your name, your blog name and its address (eg. http://blogs.murdoch.edu.au/myblog ) to be added to the list of participant blogs.

This lets us create a learning community where you can comment on other participants’ blogs and learn from each other. It will be a supportive environment and an excellent way to find your online “voice”.

How to set up your blog.

We are using software called WordPressMu at the university’s blogging site - Murdoch Blogs.  Wordpress is the most flexible and widely used blogging software in the world.

It takes about 20 minutes to set up your blog, and from then on creating posts is extremely simple.

We will create our blogs together  in the workshop. Feel free to contact Kathryn if you are not doing a workshop, have tried already to set up a blog and need help.

PART A - GET A BLOG

1. Read about when your blog should be part of Murdoch Blogs.

2. Think about the decisions to make before you get a new blog .

3. Decide the web address for the blog.

This will be in the form http://blogs.murdoch.edu.au/yourblogname . Choose carefully because this cannot be changed and it cannot be re-used, even after you delete your blog.

4. Decide the name of your blog and the tagline (eg. Murdoch University Blogs: blogs for Murdoch University staff and students)

5. Go to the get a blog page at Murdoch Blogs and get a blog.

This video shows you how to get a blog, How to get a blog at blogs.murdoch.edu.au .

PART B - FINISH SETTING UP

6. Alter the settings for your blog,  to decide things like who can see your blog, how you will deal with comments and the time zone.

7. Decide on the way your blog will look - the theme.

8. Change or delete the default post, page and comment - unless you want your first post to say “Hello World!”.

This video shows you how to personalise your blog, Personalising your blog on blogs.murdoch.edu.au.

9. Add some content by creating your first pages or posts

How to make a post.

“Writing and publishing a post” video from WordPress.tv explains it so well.

If you want to try more….

Add an image you create to the top of the blog if you want to.

Add some widgets to the sidebar - like a search box, a list of posts, a list of categories - to make your content more findable.

Activate plugins to add functions like statistics, email subscription to comments and the ability to search and insert photos from Flickr.

Go to Google Blog Search or Technorati and do a search to find blogs about a topic that interests you.