Using+a+Blog

=Using a Blog =

What is a Blog?
 A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website 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.// Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages and other media related to its topic. The ability for 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 (artlog), photographs, video, music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.

 Things Bloggers Need to Know
 In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, such as Word Press there are some terms and concepts you need to know.

 Archives
 A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on dates (like a monthly or yearly archive). The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific category. It does not stop there; you can also archive your posts by author or alphabetically. The possibilities are endless. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool.



 Feeds
 A Feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog [|Mezzoblue] has written [|a comprehensive summary] of feeds.



 Blogrolls
 A [|blogroll] is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a "sidebar" on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. [|BlogRolling] and [|blo.gs][|Link Manager] so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and managing their blogroll.



 Syndication
 A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.

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<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Managing Comments
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend them. These are known as **trackbacks** and **pingbacks**. We'll also discuss how to moderate and manage comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in "comment spam", when unwanted comments are posted to your blog. Some useful documents to get you started are: [| G mail.doc], [| How to create your own blog.doc] and [| Adding photos to your blogg.doc].

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<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Visit the Arts Online [|Blogging in the Arts] workshop. This forum aimed to help teachers to establish and use blogs to enhance student engagement, resource sharing, reflection and more personalised learning. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The workshop was led and moderated by Chris Burcin, Head of Performing Arts, Waimea College. In this workshop, Chris shared his experiences in creating Wordpress blogs for his senior Music students and choir. He led discussions on the purpose and structure of blogs, as well as how to use free blogsites such as Wordpress. Through the forum, participants learned how to work with widgets, add audio and video to their blog and upload slideshows and photos. Wordpress also allows for several different levels of blog administrators, so students can have varying degrees of input in class blogs. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Over the two week online forum the discussion covered these areas:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Starting out - Do we really need a blog? Who will use it? How will it be structured?
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Setting up a basic Wordpress blog - choosing a theme, the basics of widgets, planning pages
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Fine tuning - links, audio/ video, slideshows
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Enabling students to administer the blogsite.