Creating Your Own Blog with Blogger

Blogs are a user-friendly way to have an interactive website that doesn’t require a lot of work. One thing that you should consider though is the way your school administration will look at this, and the way you use your blog. There have been some recent instances where employees of corporations have been fired or reprimanded for what they have posted on their blog. One case dealt with a Google employee that posted information about a company meeting that was seen as a violation of corporate security. The employee was reprimanded and the information was removed from the web.

This isn’t meant to scare you, but rather make you aware of the legality that can come into play with a blog. Though some people may see it as a place to post information to be shared it shouldn’t be a place to vent frustrations, or post information that you wouldn’t want the world to see.

Blogs do have a positive side though. In the past presidential election some politicians and news media used blogs to keep people up to date about the election. Teachers are using blogs to mentor new and pre-service teachers. Administrators are also using blogs to communicate with their staff and the school community. Teachers are having students comment on essential questions in a classroom-based blog. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination.

Where to Start?

Creating a blog is a fairly straightforward process. The most widely used service is Blogger, this is part of the Google website. By going to www.blogger.com you can start your own blog. There are other sites, such as Blogmeister (also see Creating a Blog with Blogmeister) that also allow you to create a blog. The following information in this handout is about Blogger, though other sites will work in a similar way.

Start by opening your web browser and going to www.blogger.com you should see a screen that looks like this.

From this screen you will begin to create your blog. As the page says there are “3 easy steps” to creating a blog, so go ahead and click on the “Create Your Blog Now” arrow and let's create a blog.

Creating an Account

On this page you will want to enter a User Name, which identifies you but isn’t made public. The next thing you will have to enter is a Password. Just like any other password make sure that you use something that you can easily remember when you go to log in, then retype your password for verification. The next piece will identify you publicly, so you may want to use your name or perhaps something that makes sense to identify who you are. Then you have to enter your email so that if you forget your password you can retrieve it. (I have done that at least twice already!) The last thing that you need to do is accept the Terms Of Service, and yes you should really take the time to read it. Then go ahead and click Continue.

You may see this same screen again if you have entered information that someone else is already using. To fix this either add additional numbers or characters for the field that is causing the problem. This may happen more than once!

The next screen you see will look similar to this.

Here you will be asked to enter the Title of your blog, use something that makes sense to you and your audience. The next piece is to enter the beginning part of the URL where people will go to get to your blog. For example if I was doing this for my personal site I might use my full name, tadgeobrien, but what ever you do don’t include spaces or odd characters in the name. The last thing you need to do is retype the word that appears in the word verification, in the above example it happened to be aezhfvd. This is done for security. Now go ahead and click Continue. You may be returned to this screen, the mostly likely to change is the Blog address (URL).

The next screen that you will see gives you a choice of preformatted templates.

Take a look at the different templates and see if there is one that appeals to you. It is also helpful to remember your audience here, make sure that people can easily read the text that you will be adding. You can change the template if you need to later on, but be forewarned it will change anything you add outside of the regular text. Scroll to the bottom of the page after you have chosen your template and click Finish.

Now you will see a confirmation screen,

and by clicking on the Start Posting arrow you can start posting to your newly created blog.

Posting

When you begin posting you will see a screen that looks like this.

So now you are ready to type. Here are a few cautions about working with web pages and text submissions. Be careful not to navigate away from the page without either posting, or saving what you have written as a draft. If you go to another page without doing this you will end up losing all those great thoughts that need to be shared. Another word of caution, don’t insert your links until after you have finished typing. Sometimes adding the link in the middle of typing leads to some odd actions by the program.

The posting screen contains what is known as a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.

Basically you can start to simply add text to the text areas just like you would in a word processing program. The editor will generate the HTML code that is needed to see your blog. The basic tools of a word processing application, such as bolding, italicizing, and different justifications, are right above the main text area. There is also a spell check button that allows you to check the spelling of you blog, remember the whole world will be commenting on your grammar!

There is also a place to add links to the page. The whole idea of a blog is to be able to link to things that you think are worth mentioning. The little icon of the world with a link above it allows you to add links to specific web pages.

By highlighting a word and clicking on this icon you will see a popup that allows you to add a link to the word. One suggestion about this is to make sure that you link after you have typed you thoughts. Once you have finished typing your information you will want to click either the Save as Draft or Post buttons at the bottom of the page. Now if you have posted your thoughts you are officially a blogger!!

The following information is about the blogger interface, also called the dashboard. It isn’t really complex, but some guidance never hurt. There are four tabs that you will always see no matter where you go in the dashboard. They are the posting, settings, template, and view blog tabs. Each of these tabs allows you to do different things. Each of these tabs allows you to do different things. The Posting tab gives you access to all of you posts so you can edit them.

So when something that you posted seems to be incorrect, or you had a slip of the finger on the keyboard, you can go back and correct a post. It also allows you to create new posts, just like you did the first time you posted. The status tab menu simply shows you what the status of the last posting was.

The Setting Tab is important to the way people will be able to interact with your blog. The first menu of items in the settings tab relates to the basic settings of your blog. Things such as the title and description can be changed here. The Add Your Blog to our listing selections shows your blog within any searches or listing at Blogger, setting it to yes can’t hurt, remember it is available via the World Wide Web. The Quick Editing feature should be left to yes. The Show Email Post Links is up to you. Some people don’t mind their email addresses on the web. The only caution about this is spam that you may receive if your email is on the web. Show compose mode for all your blogs should also be kept to yes. If you don’t know HTML you won’t ever want to turn this off.

Don’t forget to click Save Setting before you move to another link if you have changed anything.

The Publishing Menu under settings deals with the address of your blog. Again unless you have some knowledge about FTP and web development I wouldn’t bother with this page at all.

The Formatting menu in the settings tab deals with the way your blog will appear. Things such as the time stamp and how many post show on a page are things that you may want to change in the future. The main thing that you want to make sure is correct is the time zone that is selected. It may not seem all that important, unless you aren’t suppose to be posting during work and your supervisor sees odd times on your posts. Other than that I would leave the page alone. If you make any changes make sure to click on the Save Setting button at the bottom of the page.

The next menu deals with Comments that others can add to your blog. Just think your students could comment about what you or their classmates are saying. This menu gives you the option of allowing this or not. I would suggest that you set rules for students about commenting and either make comments only accessible if they register for the blog, or make your blog a group blog. The only other part of this that could be helpful is the Comment Notification Address this way you could keep track of people when they post to your blog.

The Next menu deals with archiving. The default setting is monthly. Unless your students really start to populate the blog with comments or post I wouldn’t change this either.

The Site Feed menu is important if you want others to be able to receive a RSS (real simple syndication) feed from your blog. Basically it allows others to quickly check and see what changes if any you have made to your blog recently.

The Email menu allows you to either send posts from an email account or to have posts that you make sent to an email account.

The Members menu is for creating a blog for a group of people to post on. This maybe the way to approach having a blog that is for a specific class.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

The last thing that is important to know and be aware of is the use of RSS feeds and aggregators. A RSS feed is a page that is used to allow people to see the latest content of a specific blog. A RSS aggregator is either a web-based program or a small application that you install on your computer to allow you to keep track of specific blogs. These tools allow either you or others to keep track of what is being posted. One web-based aggregator that is available is Bloglines. This aggregator is nice since it is web-based and can be accessed from any computer that you are working on, as opposed to a specific program that is downloaded and installed on your computer

Resources-

Free Blog Creation

www.blogger.com

www.schoolblogs.com

RSS Aggregators

http://www.bloglines.com