Blogs ... in one page
Blogs and Blogging
Features of a blog
A blog (short for web log) is a web-based diary, a simple website to which the owner(s) can post announcements or reflections, and where visitors to the page can leave messages in the form of comments. Minerva now has one of these, scroll down for more info.
Using blogs is as simple as using say webmail - and most allow you to add images, sounds or link to video. They are often public, i.e. visible to anyone over the World Wide Web, but can be set for access only by a named group of individuals.
There is usually no limit on how many blogs you can set up on one blogging site. The Minerva blogging tool is restricted to one blog per module.
Blogs come in all different colours, from the University-related to the frivolous to the incisive, some examples:
- The incisive Rentergirl
- Overgrown Path - much ado about music
- Two Tunnels construction blog, naturally.
- The University related Web 2 tools in teaching and learning.
Setting up blogs for teaching and learning
If Minerva can't meet your needs, the first thing to decide is where to host your blog. The following sites provide both the server storage and the software to allow you to write and manage your blog. The commercial sites (remote from BSU) are all free, although some also provide an enhanced service for payment. Remember that BSU has no control over these.
Web sites that host blogs include the following:
- Bath Spa University
- Minerva offers a 'University-based' blogging tool. This allows you to create a blog but not a public one - users will need to be logged in to the particular module hosting the blog, so this isn't a blog in the wider sense of the word. See below for more on Minerva's blogging tool. Also, you can run a blog from the University's wiki.
- Blogger
- http://www.blogger.com/ is owned by Google and is the best known blogging site. At present you can add image files to your blog, but there's no facility to store other file types.
- Wordpress
- http://www.wordpress.com is another site with similar features to Blogger. You can store documents and pictures on the site and include them in your blog posts.
- Edublogs
- http://www.edublogs.org/ uses Wordpress software, and supports podcasts and video files. It's particularly aimed at educational users and provides licences for multi-user blogging.
- Minerva and blogs
- Any Minerva module now has two sorts of blogging tool available - Minerva's built-in blog, and an additional one from Campuspack. They differ - the Campuspack variety actually allows you to run a public blog - to find more on this, explore its permissions settings.
'Myspace' and other social networking sites are effectively blogs. Staff might also like to explore ELGG: http://www.elgg.org/ - an academic version of 'Myspace'.
Blogs and Youtube
Once a video's on Youtube it's easy to share it via your blog. Something like the following usually works:
Mark Annand • Site updated April 12th 2013 • Site Counter:
All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.
Words found on a door lintel in the garden of a house in the Cretan village of Argiroupolis.
The lintel is a fragment from the city state Lappa, which occupied the same site.
Fifteen hundred years later, when you use the web, from time to time you might well feel that the author was on to something. And if you work with particle physics, you'll know he was ...