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Learning the art of blogging
July 1, 2007 | | 3 Comments
Blogging is an art. I have been writing in this blog since June 2006. Sometimes I feel like I am writing to myself. I read the blogs of others and marvel at the depth of insight these bloggers provide. I learn just as much from others who leave comments on these blogs. In an effort to be part of these conversations, I try to use the tools I read other bloggers use. I have registered at Technorati, Twitter, and CoComment. I have a presence at del.icio.us and Flickr.
Blogging is also science. I have spent hours trying to learn ways to embed video and add buttons to my blog. I notice that many edubloggers I read are real gear heads. Yes, I am one, too. But these folks know and understand HTML and PHP coding. I am just getting my head around HTML. I don’t know PHP.
Because I wanted to have flexibility with the school blog, I am learning how to manage content on a hosted web site. Yeah…I am a geek…and an English teacher. Go figure!
What I like about all of this is that these bloggers help me as I pour through their blogs for tibits of information on the technical stuff. In turn, I get to pass along what I have learned.
The goal for me learning the ins and outs of Read/Write web tools is to help students deepen their learning. I want to provide them with a rich experience so they feel that they have had an adventure when they come to my class and forget they are actually learning.
Comments
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Tony,
I managed to finally turn the EDUC639 into a class blog!, thanks for noticing. If your interested i’ll try to summarize the steps below.
1. Go to options;reading; then focus on the front page changes up at the top.
2. Set front page as static (you need to make this page first. Mine was titles welcome).
3. Your posts page (underneath front page) will be your about page(thats created for you)
4. Tag all your posts specifically as EDUC…,English per 4.
5. These then become the categories you can link to on your “home” edublog page.
Hope that is not to confusing, if you want to give it a go. Thanks for your technorati links. I haven’t been through them yet but plan on it.
You are quite right… blogging is an art!
In the early days boy it certainly did feel like I was in my own little bubble blogging to myself then something would happen; like I would go to a workshop/meeting etc and a teacher would comment to me that they like X that I had on my blog; or that they learned Y through my blog…. yet they had never made a comment nor contacted me about it.
I am on technorati, flickr, del.icio.us etc and just now cocomment but I don’t know if I’ll ever go down the path of twitter!
It is amazing what you can pick up through other people’s blogs; and indeed the comments left on them too. It certainly makes it worth the time to catch up and read all the new postings.
At the end of the day, no matter how difficult and time consuming it can all be it is nice to share your learning with others.. it makes it all worth while!
Cheers, Rachel, NZ
Rachel,
Thanks for sharing your comments with me. I do feel like I am writing to myself. Thanks for your encouragement.
Tony