Common Craft Videos: View this great 3 minute introduction to what blogs are, why and how you would use them, and how easy it is to create a blog.Practical ExamplesPractical Examples
Definition:
"A blog is defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often accompanied by links to other blogs that the site’s editor visits on a regular basis. Think of a blog as one person’s public diary or suggestion list. Early blogs were started by Web enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on the Internet. They added commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another’s blogs. A community culture took hold." (Jay Cross)
133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002.
Blogs = Information and influence. Blogs are media.
Who blogs and where are they blogging? The fact is that bloggers are all over the country and the worldwide chart is interesting as well - 48% of blogs are from North America, 2/3 are male, 70% have a degree, 72% are in English, 79% are personal bloggers.
Bloggers are also very serious about blogging, from their surveys, 1 in 4 blog 10+ hours a week. Also, 43% of the Technorati Top 100 post more than 10 times a day. Bloggers also immerse themselves in what they do, the average one uses 5 web 2.0 apps.
Note to marketers - 4 out of 5 bloggers write brand / product reviews, 80% talk about retail customer service experience. 71% of bloggers say they are getting taken more seriously as sources of information.
Point to new things on your main website (things you'd particularly like to highlight)
Point to events you're holding in the community (or online), plus preparatory and/or follow-up information
Tell your story the way you want it told, bypassing mainstream media. By blogging your own views you're acting as "media" yourself and using a medium which is very easy for people to share, pass on, add their commentary, etc.
Highlight interesting links (...photos, videos, etc.) you've produced or found that are relevant to your work
Share thoughts on the day-to-day happenings within your work that are too small or too ephemeral to be on your main website
Anything else you feel is worth people's attention!
Set up a private blog -- a blog that's password-protected or that exists only on your office network -- to share information internally
...to get to know other co-workers and stay in touch with each other. Besides networking, it’s also used by brands for PR/customer service purposes which is what many major companies are already doing including Starbucks, Honda, Virgin America, and Dell. ... I also thought it would cool to setup (an) account for the company. Once we build up our company account we could use it to get
Uses for blogging
As an emerging tool, blogging uses have still not been completely explored. Some current uses:
Most common uses for blogging are personal and, considering its origins as a personal web publishing forum, this makes sense. Emerging uses promise opportunities in corporations and education. Further application will also be realized as existing uses (communication, learning, knowledge management, interactive journalism, etc.) are adopted by various industries - notably entertainment, health care, government.
Benefits of blogging are numerous (which explains its rapid growth!). An overriding benefit is the democratization of information. In classic models, knowledge flow was "stopped" and administered by news sources (paper, magazines, TV). Ideas in keeping with current zeitgeist or political agendas received top billing, while unpopular (though necessary for innovation and social transformation) ideas were ignored. Many of the benefits of blogging are listed above in "Uses for Blogging"...other benefits include:
Fostering the fringe - ideas are evaluated based on merit - not on source of origin.
Filtering - ideas with merit are filtered through various blogs. Significant thoughts or posts receive multiple-links and spread viral-like across the blogosphere.
Multiple perspectives - one-sided perspectives of newspapers are replaced by passionate debates exploring virtually every facet of an idea or concept.
Barrier elimination - society is about barriers - actual or unspoken. For example, I don't run in the same circle as Bill Gates - a socio-economic barrier (at the absolute minimum!). In society, this generally means that I do not have the benefit of Mr. Gates' wisdom...blogging, however changes that. Opportunities now exist to hear regular thoughts from people like Ray Ozzie, Mitch Kapor, and Larry Lesig.
Free flow - any idea can be expressed...and accessed by any one. The process of blogging separates good ideas from poor ideas. The process itself has built in quality control - try that in traditional media!
Real time - discussions and interactions happen right NOW. Waiting for tomorrow's newspaper or radio program seems like an eternity compared to real time blogging.
Links and connections - the complexity of an information heavy society requires specialization. Yet specialization is futile if a process is not created to link specialties. Blogging serves this purpose extremely well. Disparate fields of interest and thought are brought together (and dissected) in the machinations of bloggers.
Social Media Tools for Work & Learning - What does the administrative panel look like. How do you add content. Let's have a look at the kitchen and see what tools we have available.
There are many blogging tools and sites on the Web. For our demo, we chose Wordpress. Wordpress (once you get the hang of it) has a simple, but powerful interface that allows you to add/embed and include many different types of web content within your blog. It's a quick and easy way to create and maintain content about your agency, project, program or any specific topic you want to keep your clients informed about.
Date of first review/ name of reviewer: 5/16/08 [Lisa Spiro]
Additional reviewer(s):
Produced by: WordPress
Cost: Free (upgrades available for a fee)
Description: Flexible, feature-rich blogging software. "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability."
You can determine the design of your blog by choosing from over 60 themes--or customize the design using CSS
Easy to set up
Tag and categorize your posts to make them easier to find
View detailed statistics on who is reading your blog posts
Askimet spam filter keeps the crud out of your comments
Easily get your information into and our of WordPress: supports importing from other blogs or exporting to an XML format
Advantages:
Great user support. When one of my posts was mysteriously vaporized, WordPress support recovered an older version of the post and sent it to me within a couple of hours.
Because WordPress is open source, a large community of developers is creating all sorts of handy plugins and new features. For instance, ScholarPress is developing WordPress plugins for academic purposes, such as ScholarPress courseware, which allows teachers to manage a course via a WordPress blog. CommentPress enables readers to comment on a document paragraph by paragraph and has been used in several prominent projects, such as Noah Wardrip-Fruin's experiment in blog-based peer-reviewing. [Note: not all of the plugins are available for the hosted version of WordPress.]
Large and active user community.
You can view incoming links (so you can see what other people say about your post and continue the conversation).
WordPress (and other blogging software) supports a variety of uses, such as a science review, an ebook, or an undergraduate research project.
Disadvantages:
Like many web editors, the WordPress Visual Editor will typically retain the formatting when you copy and paste from other online sources. Sometimes you want to retain formatting; for instance, it's great when you can copy a table from one one web page and plunk it into your blog. However, sometimes you want to get rid of the formatting so that your post doesn't look like a hostage note compiled from cut-out letters. To do so, you may need to go into the HTML and delete the <span> or other code surrounding the oddly-formatted text. Alternatively, you can download a Firefox extension that allows you to copy as plain text.
Tips:
When you're choosing what kind of layout you would like for your blog, think about the kind of information you will be presenting. For instance, if you anticipate using tables or wide images, a three-column layout may not give you enough space. Fortunately, you can easily change the template for your blog.
WordPress offers lots of nifty widgets for your blog, However, some may not be relevant for your purposes. For instance, I had a "MeeboMe" widget that would enable folks to chat with me, but every time someone hit the page my Meebo would flash (I forget exactly what it did, but it drove me to distraction). I uninstalled the widget.
Stephen Downes from the National Research Council does a great job of making personal learning environments understandable and practical. Let's look at just his 3 principles (1:22 min.)
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.