Task 8 - Summary of the first part of chapter 6 -- Group THREE - 2011 CEI course

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Date Posted: 13:10:04 03/17/11 Thu
Author: Caroline
Subject: Task 8 - Summary of the first part of chapter 6

Chapter 6
Blogging

What is a blog?
A blog is a Web site in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order (the last posts appear first).

It consists of - text, hypertext, images, links (to other Web pages, to video, audio, etc.)
WEB + LOG = BLOG

Read-only Web Sites - Built on static chunks
Blogs - Not static / Commenting features (readers interact with the blogger)

Types or genres of blog:
1. Personal diary
2. News blog
3. Activist blogs
4. Political blogs
5. Education blogs
6. Technology blogs
7. Corporate and industry blogs
8. Celebrities and gossip blogs
9. Hobby blogs

Anatomy of a blog

Common characteristics:
• A subject or header
• A body or content section
• A comment section
• A time and date stamp

Other features:
Trackbacks – if you enable posts to receive trackbacks, you are going to be notified whenever someone talks about your blog.

Permalink – it’s a permanent URL that is generated by the blogging system and is applied to each individual post.

Blogroll – a list of links to other blogs that a particular blogger likes of finds usefull.

Locating Blogs

A number of search engines specialize strictly in locating information on blogs. Examples:

http://blogsearch.google.com - blogserach.google
http://www.ysearchblog.com - Yahoo! Blog Search
http://www.icerocket.com - IceRocket
http://samepoint.com - SamePoint
http://technorati.com - Thecnorati

The last one (Technorati) is probably the most powerful (You can filter search results for posts with “a lot of authority”, “some authority”, or “a little authority).

Evaluating Blogs

Some hints:
1. Read the blog in its entirety.
2. Follow the links (to see if the blogger follows “interesting” links).
3. Keep in mind: There are few authorities you can trust (some of them may mislead you).
4. Learn to recognize whom to trust (sites that mislead you once will likely mislead you again).
5. You need to check facts and ignore the appearances (ignore flowery layouts, good appearances, etc.).
6. Question all statistics presented (generalizations are often untrustworthy).

Choosing Blogging Software and Hosts

There are two primary ways of setting up a blog:

1. Use an online Web-based application (the easiest way to begin blogging – requires no technical skills and is very simple to set up and maintain):
Blogger (www.blogger.com)
WordPress.com (www.wordpress.com)
Typepad (www.typepad.com)

2. Use a more complex, but more flexible way:
Download blogging software and install it on your own server or through your own contracted service.
Movable Type (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype)
WordPress.org (http://wordpress.org)

When choosing a blogging software and host, the audience of the blog site needs to be taken into account:

• Less “professional” blogs (more for young people):
LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)
Xanga (http://xanga.com)

• Classroom Blogging Systems (More “professional” blogs - used for classrooms / educators):

EduBlogs (http://edublogs.org) – provides wikis, e-portfolios, collaborative class work, online journaling, discussion, problem-based learning, or social constructivist learning.

EduBlogger (http://edublogger.org/) – innovative teaching tool. Integrates blogging, education, and teacher responsibilities.

ClassBlogMeister (http://classblogmeister.com) – teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish student’s blog articles in a controlled environment (this blog enables students to write for an authentic audience).

NovemberLearning (http://nlcommunities.com) – creates global connections across school curriculum (also gives students an opportunity to publish to an authentic audience).

Gaggle Blogs (http://www.gaggle.net) – provides teachers free filtered e-mail and blog accounts.

• Microsoft has just released a blog software:
Windows Live Writer (http://get.live.com/writer) – HTML source-code editing; web preview mode; photo publishing; map publishing.

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