Introduction to Blogs

Hello, and welcome to the first activity of our new Web 2.0 tools blog.

Have you heard about blogs and wondered what they are? Well, you are reading one right now. The term 'blog' is short for web log, which started as a type of journal. Some of these online journals have become very popular, while others are more personal.


To find out more, check out Wikipedia with this link:
Wikipedia's Description

For information on the pedagogical principles related to blogging, check out the information on Educause's website at this link:
Educause 7 things
Click on the 'Adobe PDF' button to view the article.

Some things that you should know about before starting a blog.

Blogs are often full of information. In order to sign up with a blogging service, you will have to give some of your personal information such as name and email address. Where is this information going?

If you use the service that we outline here, you will need to sign up for a Google account. Google is a corporation that is actively involved in advertising and marketing. They store their information on Servers in the United States. You should read all of their privacy and information use documents prior to using their materials, and be sure that you fully understand these documents prior to agreeing to use them.

The University of Edinburgh provides a comprehensive guide to thoughtful use of third-party web services at this link.

In this activity, you will create your own blog.

There are many different Blog hosting sites. We will be using Blogger because it is free and relatively easy to use.

Click here to be redirected to the 'create a blog' page. Click on the arrow, then follow the simple prompts to generate your own blog.

If you do not already have a google account (used for gmail and other google features), then you will need to create an account. follow the prompts to generate an account. Once you have generated an account, just follow the links to create your own blog.

Good luck, and if you have any problems, just drop us a line using the 'comment' link at the bottom of the post.

Click here to go to the next article.