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Education
aBc
164 Old Road,
Oxford OX3 8SY, U.K.
Tel:
Int + 44 (0)7779 021464
Hello@EducationABC.co.uk
What is a blog?
A blog is
an easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact
with people, and more. All for FREE.
For more information on what a blog is,
and how it works, see below.
For tips on creating a successful and perhaps
popular blog, see here.
Why is information about a blog included on a school website?
Because this is an excellent activity for our students during our summer courses, both as a writing task, and as a way for students to communicate with their parents and friends back home. This gives the task a real communicative purpose in English, as well as helping our students to master a relatively new piece of software.
Here are some of the blogs created by our students in 2005:
http://www.lisavainscommunity.blogspot.com/
http://www.tormoo.blogspot.com/
http://www.edaweke.blogspot.com/
How do we get started?
Click on http://www.blogger.com/start, and follow the simple instructions!
A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger". Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently.
A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.
Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.
This longer explanation of what a BLOG is comes from a site called WIKIPEDIA (WIKI is all about making the web accessible to everyone from everywhere)
A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging".
Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs, and corporations. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author, to the collaboration of a large community of writers. Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around the blog; others are non-interactive. The totality of weblogs or blog-related websites is often called the blogosphere. When a large amount of activity, information and opinion erupts around a particular subject or controversy in the blogosphere, it is sometimes called a blogstorm or blog swarm.
The format of weblogs varies, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to article summaries or complete articles with user-provided comments and ratings. Individual weblog entries are almost always date and time-stamped, with the newest post at the top of the page, and reader comments often appearing below it. Because incoming links to specific entries are important to many weblogs, most have a way of archiving older entries and generating a static address for them; this static link is referred to as a permalink. The latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are frequently offered in weblogs in the RSS or Atom XML format, to be read with a feed reader.
The tools for editing, organizing, and publishing weblogs are variously referred to as "content management systems", "publishing platforms", and simply "weblog software".
Tips
on creating a successful blog
- that is, a blog that people will want to read and refer to.
Make
sure your text can be read easily
Avoid jazzy backgrounds or coloured text on a coloured background that
makes your words appear fuzzy, or creates too high a contrast
Keep
it simple at first
Get your blog up and running before using photos and exploring weblog
services such as Moveable Type, a more advanced version of TypePad.
Update
your blog as regularly as possible, and at the very least once
a week
There is nothing more likely to stop people reading your blog than stale
information.
Keep
your entries short
Reading information on a screen is harder than reading it on paper, so
keep your entries concise.
Use
plain English
Write in a style that people will find easy to read and, as with all communication,
avoid jargon and acronyms.
Publicise
your blog
Include your web address on your emails (you can create an automatic signature,
even if you just have web mail, which will be included on all your messages
- or just on all new messages). Tell people about it, and email them a
link, if you have just posted something that you want them to read. You
can even get it listed by search engines, such as Google, particularly
if your blog is something that other people choose to create links to
from their websites.
Ask
for comments
Encourage people to interact with your blog by inviting them to tell you
what they think of it. You can even ask them to vote in opinion polls.
Expect
positive and negative comments
Not every visitor will share your views. If you do get offensive comments,
most weblog services will allow you to remove them, and block particular
contributors from adding more in future.
Communicate
in other ways as well
Remember that your weblog isn't a replacement for direct contact with
other people! Keep talking as well!
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