Blogging Class  

The word blog is a shortened version of  "web log", and when they first started to be used served mainly as online diaries of sorts but have morphed into much more. Perhaps when you think about blogs, if you think about blogs at all that is, you think of a personal type of blog, where someone or a group of people share information about themselves or an interests of thers, i.e. blogs about librarianship or soccer. You might share resources, opinions or ideas about those things, but there are many different types of blogs, professional, hobby-based and more.

Three important points about blogs are: a. Authors (thats you!) can easily produce regular new content, which is displayed in chronological order - with the most recent postings first. b. Readers can comment on the postings if you are looking for feedback, and why wouldn't you be? But it's important to note that comments can usually be moderated by you to avoid weird, unsafe, unkind or spammy content. And c. People who read your blog can subscribe using a reader - so that they can notified when new content is posted.

Writing blogs

Once you have decided you want to blog, this is what you should ask yourself:

1. What is your blog for?

• Will it be a personal blog for your own hobby or interests?
• Will it be a professional blog?
  
• Will it be a course or training blog, which you use as a focus for all activities in a class or workshop? e.g. announcements, access to resources (e.g. documents, presentations, etc) and, as and when appropriate, encouraging topical discussion by students. 
• Will you encourage others to create their own learning blogs to reflect on their learning.

1. How often are you going to blog?
   
   The regularity of blogging will depend upon a number of factors, including your time, interest and motivation to blog, and of course the purpose of the blog!  Take a look at this article from Web Worker Daily, which asks  Just how often should you blog?

Thanks to Jane Hart for some of the text on this page