Learning From Blogging: Creating your own and learning frrom others'

Learning from Blogging: Starting your Own and Learning from Other's Tracy Hamilton Southlake Regional Health Centre Newmarket, Ontario, Canada

Objectives

Defining a blog

Creating your own blog

Keeping track of your own learning experiences (personal, work-related, etc.)

Adding extras to your blog to make it your own (style, photos, videos, translators, etc.)

Learning from other bloggers (style, tools, topics, queries)

Using fellow bloggers as peer groups and support teams

What is a Blog?

Usually maintained by a single person , but can be collaborative

Regular entries (posts) can be of text , graphics or video (or all 3)

Posts are displayed reverse-chronological

Often contain commentary or news on a particular subject

Can function as a diary

Combine text, images, links to other blogs/web pages , or other media

Usually allow for readers to provide feedback or comments

“ State of the Blogosphere”

Technorati is tracking 133 million since 2002.

Only 1.5 million had postings in last 7 days (of surveying)

http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

http://www.blogherald.com/2008/02/11/how-many-blogs-are-there-is-someone-still-counting/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/state_of_the_blogosphere_2008.php

Components of a Blog Typical Blog Components Left Sidebar Main Body Posts – reverse chronological order Right Sidebar Label/Tag Links Archive of all posts Date posted Post Title Other available pages Link to info about author Blog Name/tagline Most recent written posts List of recommend blogs* Link for reader comments Header picture Link to RSS feed* Search your blog

Other Blog Elements (…list is endless)

Translators (Google, Babelfish)

Blog hits/statistics (BlogCounter, Google Analytics)

Slide Shows (Picasa, Flickr)

Videos (YouTube)

Toys/games (Pyzam)

Polls (Google, BlogPoll)

Ads (GoogleAds, Adsense)

Comics

Events

Contact Links

And more, and more, …. Almost 35,000 at http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

Most get added to the sidebar area.

What does a typical blog look like?

Sign me up! So, where do I start?

Forbes.com Best of the Web, Blogs, Blog Tools

www.blogger.com

Adding in another post

Now I want to make it MINE! (the simple way)

Options Under SETTINGS

Title & blog description

List in Google blog listings

Import/export/delete a blog

Publish to custom domain

# posts per page, date, time zone, etc

Allow/moderate/location of comments

Archiving of posts

Site feed* - important to set up so your blog can be subscribed to

Email set up for posting directly to blog

Permissions (who can read/write) – make private

Now I want to make it MINE even more! (the html way)

www.colorschemer.com

Template Headings – HTML parts of your blog Body 1

Template Headings – HTML parts of your blog 1 Body Outter- wrapper 2 wrap2 3 Content-wrapper 4 Main-wrapper “ flower image area” 5 main 6 Sidebar-wrapper 7 $sidebarBgColor 8 Header-wrapper 9 Header .titlewrapper 10 Header h1 11 Header .descriptionwrapper 12 h2.date-header 13 post 14 Post h3 15 Post-body 16 Sidebar h2 17 sidebar .widget 18 Post footer 19

Learning From Others

Reading, Commenting, Linking Other Blogs

Using RSS Readers

Using Twitter

Blogger Community Read Quote Link Blogger Community

www.google.com/reader

RSS Reader “ Feeds” from blogs, that I subscribe to are collected here. Post headings and beginning lines of the post (sometimes full posts). I can scan headings and read those of the most interest to me.

Developed by Tony Karrer - elearningtech.blogspot.com www.elearninglearning.com

Users enter 160 character comments called Tweets. These tweets are essentially microblogs. www.twitter.com

www.twitter.com

www.tweetdeck.com

www.coveritlive.com

Helpful Links for Learning to Blog

Dummies.com The Essentials of Using Blogger to Publish Your Blogs

( http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-essentials-of-using-blogger-to-publish-your-b0.html )

How to Create a Blog Post in WordPress

( http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-create-a-blog-post-in-wordpress.html )

How To Be Heard (Stephen Downes)

http://www.downes.ca/post/2

Top 10 Reasons to Blog or Not (Tony Karrer)

http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/10/top-ten-reasons-to-blog-and-top-ten.html

Blog Colour Scheme Ideas

http:// www.colorschemer.com / - lots of colour schemes to get ideas from

http://www.atalasoft.com/31apps/ColorSchemeGenerator/ - generate a colour scheme from a photo

http:// www.javascripter.net/faq/rgbtohex.htm - change rgb to hex

copy and paste a picture/image into (Windows) Paint, then use the colour picker (eyedropper) to grab the colour, click Colors, Edit Colors, Define Custom Colours, then take the Red, Green and Blue values (ie: 169, 215, 132) plug them into this link and get your HEX colour value (ie: #F45P04) for your blog

Blog Templates

Blog Templates (Google "Blog Templates", "Blogger Templates", "WordPress Blog Templates", etc.)

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com /

http://btemplates.com

http://blogspottemplates.blogspot.com/

http://www.bloggingthemes.com/

Blog Stats

http://blogcounter.com

http:// google.com /analytics

Great resource to understand it all (Web 2.0 that is):

www.commoncraft.com/show

Blogs in Plain English

Twitter in Plain English

RSS in Plain English

Social Networking in Plain English

Wikis in Plain English

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

Podcasting in Plain English

and especially.....Zombies in Plain English

heck they're all good, and the list goes on

eLearning Guild Online Forum Archive

RSS: The New Learning Pipeline : Online Events Archive http://www.elearningguild.com/olf/olfarchives/index.cfm?id=474&action=viewonly

An Introduction to Blogs, Wikis, and RSS - New Technologies for e-Learning : Online Events Archive http://www.elearningguild.com/olf/olfarchives/index.cfm?id=359&action=viewonly