23 Things Week 1 - Blogs

WEEK 1 – BLOGS
1) Read this blog
2) Set up your own blog
3) Register your blog

1) Read this blog

Blogs are websites that share certain characteristics;

• Easy to create and update, with no techie knowledge required
• Journal-style entries or “posts”, with the most recent post appearing at the top of the page
• Readers can “comment” on each post with questions, more information or anything else
• Readers can subscribe to blog updates using RSS – we’ll learn how to do this next week

Blogs can be about anything – whatever your interest, there will be blogs about it. On the whole, the tone of blogs is informal, chatty and open to dialogue

2) Set up your own blog

Throughout the course, you will be recording your experiences with the 23 Things on your own blog.
This means that you will be reflecting on the course as you proceed, and that you will be sharing your experiences and discoveries with the other course participants. (You can remain anonymous to colleagues if you want, but you will have to tell us via email what your blog is if you take this option.)
There are many blogging softwares available and you can pick any one you want. The instructions provided here are for Blogger, but WordPress and LiveJournal are also very popular.
It’s easy to set up your blog – just follow these 3 steps:

a) Go to www.blogger.com and click on “Create Your Blog Now”

Make sure that you are happy with your Display Name

b) Name your blog and give it an address

Remember that the whole web world can see your blog title and blog address. You might not want to use your real name. Consider creating a blog name that’s anonymous, yet uniquely you.

The format is http://name.blogspot.com, so the URL for your blog will look something like this; http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/

c) Select your template.

Once this is done, you can start posting to your blog. Try writing a post about your feelings and expectations for the 23 Things course, and your experience in creating a blog.

From now on, write a post about each of the 23 Things so that you can reflect on your experiences and share them with other participants.

3) Register your blog

See the link for "Comments" under this post? Click on it! Put the internet address of your blog in the comment. You can also add any comment you like.