Guide to Blogging: How do I get started?

Decisions to Make About Blogging

Initial Considerations

A blog is a “Web log,” or diary, made up of small entries or “posts” that are displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blogs allow anyone to publish content on the Web quickly and easily. Many blogs come with built-in commenting tools that allow readers to respond to individual entries, establishing the basis for collaboration, discussion, and peer review.

When blogs are used as instructional tools, they allow students to:

capture and share impressions of live lectures and events
maintain a diary of personal thoughts
post content in multiple formats, including text, audio recordings, and video clips
continue course-related discussions outside class
record and share responses to course readings
collect, annotate, organize, and share hyperlinks to course-related Web materials, including the latest content (RSS news feeds) from online media outlets
post works-in-progress for review by instructors and peers
post comments and critiques of classmates’ blog entries
send instructors and classmates automatic notification of new blog entries through built-in RSS feeds

Before You Begin

Before you advocate blogging, there are several questions you will want to answer:

What do you hope to achieve?
Are your users (students and faculty) receptive?
Do you have the necessary infrastructure and support?
What policies may be necessary?
What options should you consider?

What do you hope to achieve?

Blogging might replace existing pedagogical practices, enhance those practices, or become the means through which students actively shape the course and its objectives. If you have decided to use blogging in one of your courses, think about which single project, lesson, or graded activity would benefit the most from the use of blogs. For example, if group work already forms an essential part of your course, would that work be enhanced by the introduction of blogging? Consider the following questions as you begin to define your approach:

Am I looking for a digital drop box with interactive features? If so, is blogging a convenient way to have students post their work for review?
Do I want to extend course discussions beyond the scheduled class sessions? If so, will I be monitoring student discussions or contributing to them?
Will students be blogging in order to emulate the way professionals in the discipline perform their research or practice their trade?
Is my goal to create an active learning community? If so, should students be invited to shape the direction of the course through a community blog? Am I comfortable with a course that evolves in this way?
Am I interested in connecting my students with communities of practice that lie outside the boundaries of the classroom? If so, do I want to create a public blogging space open to a wider readership?

Are your users receptive?

Two groups must be receptive to blogging for implementation to be successful: students and faculty. Although we often assume that students are blogging on their own and are comfortable expressing themselves in public forums through such social networking sites as Facebook and MySpace, it is important to test this assumption, especially for your user population. Remember that exciting extracurricular activities might no longer seem attractive to students when there is a grade attached.

Faculty may have their own misgivings, even when they are bloggers themselves. A blog is only as sophisticated as its author, and the blogs of students with little exposure to complex issues may devolve quickly into trivia unless their entries are carefully guided by course structure. Ultimately, a course-based blogging activity may bear little resemblance to the kind of freewheeling, self-fashioning Web sites of long-time blogophiles. Faculty may curtail some of the freedoms associated with the blogosphere, asking their students to keep their blogs focused on explicating and responding to course readings.

Initially, certain disciplines may be more receptive to blogging than others. In fields where journaling has long been an effective approach to inviting student participation and helping learners hone their critical-thinking and writing skills, instructors may be the first to recognize the value of incorporating student blogs into courses. Blogging has found its way into English composition, media and communications, journalism, and other writing-intensive courses because of the role that blogs increasingly play in the lives of professional writers, journalists, photographers, videographers, and marketers, as well as scholars of media, public policy, law, and government. In these and other contexts, blogs become an important way of bringing authentic real-world practice into the classroom.

Do you have the necessary infrastructure and support?

Universities are beginning to license enterprise versions of commonly available blogging applications in order to offer their own blog services for faculty, staff, and students. These services are intended to support teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and individual expression for the college or university community. Integrated with the institution’s authentication infrastructure, the blog service facilitates a secure, password-protected approach to academic blogging. With a college or university ID and password, a user may login to the service, request a weblog, and choose from a list of options to set their blog’s access control. An instructor can easily create a blog for a specific class and attach registered students to the blog as authors. In addition, each blog comes with its own search engine so that blog authors and readers can quickly find previous entries. Furthermore, the campus blog server will automatically e-mail specific people every time an author update’s her blog.

For those instructors whose institution does not yet offer a hosted blog service, the first place to turn for support is typically the campus center for teaching and learning, where educational technologists can help you decide on a blog application that suits your needs and create a plan of action should you need additional technical support once the course is under way.

What policies may be necessary?

Only recently have institutions begun to focus on campus policies covering blogging by faculty and staff. With the potential of lawsuits for defamatory remarks made in the blogosphere, institutions are issuing statements that let employees know they blog at their own risk.

Institutions should seek advice from their campus general counsel about potential liabilities associated with student speech and potential violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). If a course is required for graduation, the instructor may be violating FERPA by insisting that students submit their work to a public site—giving up a privacy right—as a condition of enrollment. FERPA legislation does not explicitly address these and other questions involving emerging technologies. For this reason, it is important that institutions seek the advice of legal counsel to ensure that their student privacy policies take into account emerging technologies such as blogging.

Colleges and universities should also investigate policies to cover other considerations:

Are blogs considered the intellectual property of the institution or of the individual faculty member or student who creates them?
Do guidelines for copyright and fair use apply to blogs as well as other works?
If a student makes a defamatory remark in his or her course-assigned blog, is the institution or faculty member legally responsible?
If a course required for graduation mandates that a student submit postings to a public site in a personally identifiable way, would the institution be requiring the student to give up a privacy right as a condition of enrollment? If so, does this constitute a FERPA violation?
Should students be given a list of precautions they should take for concealing identifying personal information from the world at large?
Should student blogs be password-protected, limiting access to registered course members or the instructor alone?

What options should you consider?

Before you begin blogging, there are a number of options to consider. Although this is not an exhaustive list, it illustrates some of the choices available.

Access

Will the student blogs be available only to students registered in a course? To any student at the college or university? To anyone (student, faculty, staff, or alumnus) at the institution? To anyone, irrespective of whether they are associated with the institution?
Will the student blogs be available after the end of the term? To whom?

Required or Optional

Is blogging a required activity for everyone in the course? If so, how often will students be required to compose a new blog entry? How will student entries be evaluated?
How often will the instructor review student blogs? Will instructor feedback be included as comments on the student’s blog (and visible to all readers), or will it be confidential?
Will students be required to read and respond to one another’s blogs? How often? How will student participation be graded?
Will students use pseudonyms or write under their own names?

User Support

Do faculty and students have the necessary computer skills to create blogs?
If blogging is required, do all students have the technology needed?
What accommodations are in place for accessibility?

What It Takes to Blog

You may choose to begin by creating a personal blog hosted for free by one of the many Web-based blog providers, including but not limited to:

Visit any of these Web-based services or additional options listed in the “Where can I learn more?” section and follow the step-by-step directions to create an account:

You will enter your e-mail address, choose a password, and use both to log in to the service each time you wish to access your blog.
You will be asked to choose your blog signature (a user name that is commonly a pseudonym) and to accept the terms of service.
Next, you will be able to choose a graphical layout for your blog from among the available templates, which might be customized with drag-and-drop tools.
Without having to know HTML, you can use the blog editing environment to write and edit individual posts, categorize your posts, and create automatic archives.
The interface will have buttons for uploading photos, videos, or podcasts to your blog. Some services support moblogging, in which you can send photos and text directly from your mobile device to your blog.
Some services allow you to embed content and functionality from sites such as Amazon and Skype inside your blog.
Google and blog search engines will be instantly notified about new content when you update your blog (a feature that may or may not appeal to you).

In addition to single-author blogs, some blogs are written by multiple authors. Selecting an appropriate multiauthor tool for team blogging can be tricky. Consider the following as a basic list of criteria in selecting a community-oriented blogging tool:

Must allow multiple authors (without insisting on separate accounts for each)
Should allow the academic unit to host the tool on the institution’s own servers if the content or author information must be protected
Should be searchable
Should allow authors to make format changes (such as bold text and bulleted lists) and easily insert hyperlinks
Should allow for the posting of drafts, which other editors approve
Should allow for comments
Easy posting from Macs and PCs using common browsers

ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Blogging What are others doing? Central Queensland University Middlebury College University of British Columbia Additional Examples of Blogs What do students think? Reflecting, Writing, and Responding: Reasons Students Blog The Campus Press Blogs How do I get started? Position and Perspective Decisions to Make About Blogging What Faculty Want to Know Making the Case for Blogging		Decisions to Make About Blogging Guide to Blogging: How do I get started? Decisions to Make About Blogging Initial Considerations A blog is a “Web log,” or diary, made up of small entries or “posts” that are displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blogs allow anyone to publish content on the Web quickly and easily. Many blogs come with built-in commenting tools that allow readers to respond to individual entries, establishing the basis for collaboration, discussion, and peer review. When blogs are used as instructional tools, they allow students to: capture and share impressions of live lectures and events maintain a diary of personal thoughts post content in multiple formats, including text, audio recordings, and video clips continue course-related discussions outside class record and share responses to course readings collect, annotate, organize, and share hyperlinks to course-related Web materials, including the latest content (RSS news feeds) from online media outlets post works-in-progress for review by instructors and peers post comments and critiques of classmates’ blog entries send instructors and classmates automatic notification of new blog entries through built-in RSS feeds Before You Begin Before you advocate blogging, there are several questions you will want to answer: What do you hope to achieve? Are your users (students and faculty) receptive? Do you have the necessary infrastructure and support? What policies may be necessary? What options should you consider? What do you hope to achieve? Blogging might replace existing pedagogical practices, enhance those practices, or become the means through which students actively shape the course and its objectives. If you have decided to use blogging in one of your courses, think about which single project, lesson, or graded activity would benefit the most from the use of blogs. For example, if group work already forms an essential part of your course, would that work be enhanced by the introduction of blogging? Consider the following questions as you begin to define your approach: Am I looking for a digital drop box with interactive features? If so, is blogging a convenient way to have students post their work for review? Do I want to extend course discussions beyond the scheduled class sessions? If so, will I be monitoring student discussions or contributing to them? Will students be blogging in order to emulate the way professionals in the discipline perform their research or practice their trade? Is my goal to create an active learning community? If so, should students be invited to shape the direction of the course through a community blog? Am I comfortable with a course that evolves in this way? Am I interested in connecting my students with communities of practice that lie outside the boundaries of the classroom? If so, do I want to create a public blogging space open to a wider readership? Are your users receptive? Two groups must be receptive to blogging for implementation to be successful: students and faculty. Although we often assume that students are blogging on their own and are comfortable expressing themselves in public forums through such social networking sites as Facebook and MySpace, it is important to test this assumption, especially for your user population. Remember that exciting extracurricular activities might no longer seem attractive to students when there is a grade attached. Faculty may have their own misgivings, even when they are bloggers themselves. A blog is only as sophisticated as its author, and the blogs of students with little exposure to complex issues may devolve quickly into trivia unless their entries are carefully guided by course structure. Ultimately, a course-based blogging activity may bear little resemblance to the kind of freewheeling, self-fashioning Web sites of long-time blogophiles. Faculty may curtail some of the freedoms associated with the blogosphere, asking their students to keep their blogs focused on explicating and responding to course readings. Initially, certain disciplines may be more receptive to blogging than others. In fields where journaling has long been an effective approach to inviting student participation and helping learners hone their critical-thinking and writing skills, instructors may be the first to recognize the value of incorporating student blogs into courses. Blogging has found its way into English composition, media and communications, journalism, and other writing-intensive courses because of the role that blogs increasingly play in the lives of professional writers, journalists, photographers, videographers, and marketers, as well as scholars of media, public policy, law, and government. In these and other contexts, blogs become an important way of bringing authentic real-world practice into the classroom. Do you have the necessary infrastructure and support? Universities are beginning to license enterprise versions of commonly available blogging applications in order to offer their own blog services for faculty, staff, and students. These services are intended to support teaching and learning, scholarly communication, and individual expression for the college or university community. Integrated with the institution’s authentication infrastructure, the blog service facilitates a secure, password-protected approach to academic blogging. With a college or university ID and password, a user may login to the service, request a weblog, and choose from a list of options to set their blog’s access control. An instructor can easily create a blog for a specific class and attach registered students to the blog as authors. In addition, each blog comes with its own search engine so that blog authors and readers can quickly find previous entries. Furthermore, the campus blog server will automatically e-mail specific people every time an author update’s her blog. For those instructors whose institution does not yet offer a hosted blog service, the first place to turn for support is typically the campus center for teaching and learning, where educational technologists can help you decide on a blog application that suits your needs and create a plan of action should you need additional technical support once the course is under way. What policies may be necessary? Only recently have institutions begun to focus on campus policies covering blogging by faculty and staff. With the potential of lawsuits for defamatory remarks made in the blogosphere, institutions are issuing statements that let employees know they blog at their own risk. Institutions should seek advice from their campus general counsel about potential liabilities associated with student speech and potential violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). If a course is required for graduation, the instructor may be violating FERPA by insisting that students submit their work to a public site—giving up a privacy right—as a condition of enrollment. FERPA legislation does not explicitly address these and other questions involving emerging technologies. For this reason, it is important that institutions seek the advice of legal counsel to ensure that their student privacy policies take into account emerging technologies such as blogging. Colleges and universities should also investigate policies to cover other considerations: Are blogs considered the intellectual property of the institution or of the individual faculty member or student who creates them? Do guidelines for copyright and fair use apply to blogs as well as other works? If a student makes a defamatory remark in his or her course-assigned blog, is the institution or faculty member legally responsible? If a course required for graduation mandates that a student submit postings to a public site in a personally identifiable way, would the institution be requiring the student to give up a privacy right as a condition of enrollment? If so, does this constitute a FERPA violation? Should students be given a list of precautions they should take for concealing identifying personal information from the world at large? Should student blogs be password-protected, limiting access to registered course members or the instructor alone? What options should you consider? Before you begin blogging, there are a number of options to consider. Although this is not an exhaustive list, it illustrates some of the choices available. Access Will the student blogs be available only to students registered in a course? To any student at the college or university? To anyone (student, faculty, staff, or alumnus) at the institution? To anyone, irrespective of whether they are associated with the institution? Will the student blogs be available after the end of the term? To whom? Required or Optional Is blogging a required activity for everyone in the course? If so, how often will students be required to compose a new blog entry? How will student entries be evaluated? How often will the instructor review student blogs? Will instructor feedback be included as comments on the student’s blog (and visible to all readers), or will it be confidential? Will students be required to read and respond to one another’s blogs? How often? How will student participation be graded? Will students use pseudonyms or write under their own names? User Support Do faculty and students have the necessary computer skills to create blogs? If blogging is required, do all students have the technology needed? What accommodations are in place for accessibility? What It Takes to Blog You may choose to begin by creating a personal blog hosted for free by one of the many Web-based blog providers, including but not limited to: http://www.blogger.com http://edublogs.org http://www.wordpress.org http://www.livejournal.com http://www.typepad.com http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype Visit any of these Web-based services or additional options listed in the “Where can I learn more?” section and follow the step-by-step directions to create an account: You will enter your e-mail address, choose a password, and use both to log in to the service each time you wish to access your blog. You will be asked to choose your blog signature (a user name that is commonly a pseudonym) and to accept the terms of service. Next, you will be able to choose a graphical layout for your blog from among the available templates, which might be customized with drag-and-drop tools. Without having to know HTML, you can use the blog editing environment to write and edit individual posts, categorize your posts, and create automatic archives. The interface will have buttons for uploading photos, videos, or podcasts to your blog. Some services support moblogging, in which you can send photos and text directly from your mobile device to your blog. Some services allow you to embed content and functionality from sites such as Amazon and Skype inside your blog. Google and blog search engines will be instantly notified about new content when you update your blog (a feature that may or may not appeal to you). In addition to single-author blogs, some blogs are written by multiple authors. Selecting an appropriate multiauthor tool for team blogging can be tricky. Consider the following as a basic list of criteria in selecting a community-oriented blogging tool: Must allow multiple authors (without insisting on separate accounts for each) Should allow the academic unit to host the tool on the institution’s own servers if the content or author information must be protected Should be searchable Should allow authors to make format changes (such as bold text and bulleted lists) and easily insert hyperlinks Should allow for the posting of drafts, which other editors approve Should allow for comments Easy posting from Macs and PCs using common browsers
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