This week, I check out weblogs for the E-learning Toolkit activity. Although I do have some experience with weblogs, both as readers and as a publisher, I welcome the opportunity to learn more about them. I was most surprised and impressed to visit the link to the ETEC 522 course site, which appears to host and manage most or all of the course content. Makes sense, I suppose because weblogs are much more than personal journals, but I had never really stopped to think about how many people or agencies are using blogs to manage their content.
I’ve never used Blogger as a weblog application, so I created an account to check things out a little. This was pretty much the standard sign-up procedure for web services, no surprises here. The Blogger interface is very similar to that of WordPress, which I use quite often. Blogger makes publishing very easy and I was also able to change my template with no trouble at all.
While I understand that Blogger and WordPress are very popular in educational settings, I still prefer using Class Blogmeister with my students. I feel comfortable and in complete control over postings because I am able to preview and approve entries and comments before they are published. This is an important feature if you’re a grade eight teacher.
I did however try out Google Blog Search to locate some great NHL blogs that I added to my Google Reader. I want to teach my students how and why to do this during units of study. I’m also trying to locate a nice student blog evaluation rubric that I can use next school year. I suppose I could make one myself, but I’d prefer not to re-invent.
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