Going Blog Wild?
Problogue:
I have, what I think, is a relatively long history with blogging. I don’t recall when I started reading or using some specific ones, but I started writing and maintaining my own personal blog in July of 2005. I did it as a place to express myself with words and to share humour and random musings. I enjoyed publishing my words for all to see, and I really enjoyed it when people (ones I knew or total strangers) would stop by and leave comments. At a time eerily near that of my starting of this program, I basically stopped. It’s not so much that I ran out of original material as I got busy. Over a year later, I started again with a new blog, but in a more focused and anonymous form.
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The first time I used blogging with my students was three or four years ago. I didn’t have any solid research or anything behind it – it was before I started this program. I was just a techie guy who thought it would be a worthwhile activity to try with my students. I figured some of them may really like it, especially, perhaps, some of my struggling writers. I was curious to see what would happen (more on that in another post this week). Since I was a Blogger, they used Blogger, too.
This year, I have not used blogs with my students yet. I do, however, use WordPress to maintain my school’s site.
For my own use, I like Blogger. Its interface is clean and simple, and I like how my blog / site looks currently. It’s easy for me to get in, do what I need to do, and log out. For school, I use WordPress because it’s more robust and flexible / customizable. I don’t like how busy its dashboard is, and I’m not a fan of how it works in other ways, but it’s pretty powerful and the finished product looks good.
I don’t think there are any platforms that won’t work for me at al, but I think there are ones that are just less useful / appealing to me now.
Drupal: it sounds solid, and is highly customizable. I just wasn’t ready for a steep learning curve when I started my latest site – which would make it far more trouble than what I want for school now, too.
Edublogs: I’ve heard good things about it, and from the site, I like a lot of the school-specific abilities it affords, but I’m not interested in getting into a blog platform with pay levels.
Loudblog: I’d never heard of it before this week. I gather it’s mainly for publishing media / music, especially podcasts? I’m a music guy, but this site doesn’t like my kind of thing.
Tumblr: I have a few students that are big Tumblr fans. After looking at it this week, I am more open to it – it seems like it has more to offer than I thought it would. However, my first impression of it was that it was mainly picture-based, with fewer words – and a lot of those pictures were of pop culture things or of questionable content. It made me a little uneasy for school use.
Posted in: Week 07: Blogs
Juliana 6:43 pm on October 17, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for your post! You spoke about using blogger for personal use and WordPress for school use. From a venture point of view, what do you think should be done to the design of these blogs to improve them and make them better for your personal and school applications?
Juliana.
mcquaid 10:17 am on October 19, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
A couple of features I’d like to see (if they don’t exist somewhere yet):
– I would love it if Blogger allowed you to make separate pages like WP does
– better threading of conversations – more like a message board
– maybe Edublogs does this… more control of accounts, groups, comments, etc.
Just for starters, perhaps!
Juliana 4:37 pm on October 19, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for your responses! Threading of conversations is important and it would be nice if the blogs out there give did give us more control of accounts and groups. May be in the future
Juliana.
bcourey 7:34 pm on October 18, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Your experience with blogging began in the same way we described in the history of blogging – as a personal journal, and because of your positive experience with this format, it sounds like you could see the benefits of this communication tool for your students. As Juliana points out, what do you think would make blogs even better if you had a wish list/
mcquaid 10:21 am on October 19, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Another feature I would like to see is suggested links / “pages like…”, perhaps. In it, students who post under certain topics / subjects may have suggested pre-checked, safe blogs / sites that may be of interest to them. Perhaps this could just be something to add in a sidebar.
Another thing I would like is some sort of penpals matchmaking… maybe a meeting place of sorts on a parent site (or just from the parent site). Say… you were doing a project on Flat Stanley or a class was working on a theme from a certain country. The matching utility could math that class (or student(s) up with other students exploring a similar topic or from that particular place. It would be a good way to facilitate some community-of-learning / collaborative type “stuff”!
Deb Kim 8:28 pm on October 18, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow, thanks for the thorough analysis on the blogs.
I’ve tried Blogger once when my friend introduced it to me. She was using it for her Science and Chemistry classes and had a good experience with it, so she recommended it to me. She also gave me a training session on how to create Blogger. However, since I was a big fan of WordPress and had used anything else other than WP, I had hard time setting up a blog using Blogger. Many setup functions were different, so I had to go back to WP.
But I’ve heard from many people around me that Blogger is a good one to use for courses, so I’d like to try it this coming summer.
I agree with you that WordPress is easier than Blogger in terms of how Dashboard is set up. That’s probably why I always go back to WP.
Thanks for sharing!
Deb
mcquaid 10:22 am on October 19, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You’ve got it backwards, Deb! I find Blogger easier to use – it’s simpler than WordPress. I like WordPress. It’s just more… “involved”.
Deb Giesbrecht 5:53 pm on October 21, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for the list of blogs – I never have explored this arena before and find that there are many options available for one’s use. Like anything though, learning a new ‘technology’ takes a lot of time and energy. I am always surprised to find people who use these tools effectively in their classroom, while others appear to not be so efficient at it.