what is Blog!!!!!!!!!
A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
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 of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging or vlogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting).Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
As of 16 February 2011 there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.
The same sorts of questions apply when choosing a blogging platform for large classes as do when looking at small classes. The grouping functions of Livejournal can be helpful, although for especially large classes they may not scale well. Other free blog hosts: Blogger, Wordpress, Edublogs, among others, are all good choices. I have tried mixed-blog classes, requiring only that students use a blogging system that provides RSS feeds, but in terms of support for new users this can become difficult.
It is helpful to aggregate blogs for small classes, and vital for large classes. Unfortunately, there is not a single, easily used solution for creating an aggregator for a large class. It is a good idea to plan for some time to collect the urls of students blogs, along with their true names. I have done this over email, set up a special web form to collect the data, and even integrated this with a Lylina aggregator that was altered to allow anyone to add their information. There are some early tools that can help with this, but generally it may be easier, if time consuming, to collect these via email or on paper and enter them manually into an aggregator (and your grade book).
The biggest barrier to large-scale blogging? Every blogging class has a small contingent of students who have a great deal of difficulty understanding how to blog, and of course this group grows proportionately with the size of the class. There are several strategies that can be used to mitigate this. First, choose a single platform, and one that already has helpful resources and tutorials you can provide to students. A quick search will turn up tutorials for a number of platforms. Second, seek out your most experienced bloggers in the class who are willing to help the neophytes. The culture of blogging often attracts those who are willing to help others get a handle on things. Finally, plan for this hurdle. Once cleared, students are usually off and running, but instructors often overestimate students' exposure to blogging and facility with computing generally.
http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu/articles/view.php?id=12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
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 of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging or vlogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting).Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
As of 16 February 2011 there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.
Everybody blog!
The other alternative is to set up either blogs for small groups of people or individual blogs. In my experience, working with group blogs carries with it many of the logistical difficulties of working with groups in a large class, with the additional difficulty of managing the blogs. For that reason, even in very large classes, I usually have students set up blogs individually.The same sorts of questions apply when choosing a blogging platform for large classes as do when looking at small classes. The grouping functions of Livejournal can be helpful, although for especially large classes they may not scale well. Other free blog hosts: Blogger, Wordpress, Edublogs, among others, are all good choices. I have tried mixed-blog classes, requiring only that students use a blogging system that provides RSS feeds, but in terms of support for new users this can become difficult.
It is helpful to aggregate blogs for small classes, and vital for large classes. Unfortunately, there is not a single, easily used solution for creating an aggregator for a large class. It is a good idea to plan for some time to collect the urls of students blogs, along with their true names. I have done this over email, set up a special web form to collect the data, and even integrated this with a Lylina aggregator that was altered to allow anyone to add their information. There are some early tools that can help with this, but generally it may be easier, if time consuming, to collect these via email or on paper and enter them manually into an aggregator (and your grade book).
The biggest barrier to large-scale blogging? Every blogging class has a small contingent of students who have a great deal of difficulty understanding how to blog, and of course this group grows proportionately with the size of the class. There are several strategies that can be used to mitigate this. First, choose a single platform, and one that already has helpful resources and tutorials you can provide to students. A quick search will turn up tutorials for a number of platforms. Second, seek out your most experienced bloggers in the class who are willing to help the neophytes. The culture of blogging often attracts those who are willing to help others get a handle on things. Finally, plan for this hurdle. Once cleared, students are usually off and running, but instructors often overestimate students' exposure to blogging and facility with computing generally.
http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu/articles/view.php?id=12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
