learning from blogging: creating your own and learning frrom others
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Learning from Blogging: Starting your Own and Learning from Other's
Tracy HamiltonSouthlake 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
Left Sidebar Main Body
Posts – reverse chronological order
Right Sidebar
Label/Tag Links
Archive of all posts
Date posted
Post Title
Typical Blog Components
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=openMost get added to the sidebar area.
What does a typical blog look like?
Sign me up!So, where do I start?
Forbes.comBest 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
BodyTemplate Headings – HTML parts of your blog
1 Outter- wrapper
2wrap2
3
Content-wrapper4Main-wrapper
“flower image area”
5main 6
Sidebar-wrapper7
$sidebarBgColor8
Header-wrapper
9
Header .titlewrapper
10
Header h111
Header .descriptionwrapper
12
h2.date-header 13
post14
Post h3
15
Post-body
16
Sidebar h217
sidebar .widget
18
Post footer19
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 BlogDummies.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
Both by Brent Schlenker (elearndev.blogspot.com )