Weblogs

=WEBLOGS=

Technical Description
Weblogs, or as they are more commonly known "blogs," are a technology for quick posting of content on the internet. Before the invention of blogs, users would have tediously edit webpages, either by hand or with an expensive program, to change the content and the visual style. Blogs changed that process, and brought web publishing to the general population.

Blogs have a couple of key pieces:


 * 1) Title- the name of the blog
 * 2) Posts- the main content. A writer creates a new post, which includes the title, body, categories, author, and time code. These posts go in reverse chronological order, with the newest post on the top of the page. There may be multiple pages in the archives. There also may be multiple authors in larger blogs.
 * 3) Pages- side content. Common pages include an About page, with information about the author(s) and blog message.
 * 4) Theme- the appearance of the blog. All posts and pages on the blog have the same "look"- where the header is, the title, a picture, how the sidebars are position, and the colors.

Some common blogging platforms are Wordpress and Blogger. Those are run by companies. Wordpress also offers a downloadable package to install on any server that a person has, or buys. This allows complete customization for those with the know-how.



Education Usage
There are a couple of different ways to use blogs in the classroom. The simplest is to keep parents and other teachers what is going in the classroom. Here is a teacher who posts about the activities her students are experiencing in their classroom. This is the most common.

Another use is to post questions, and have the students respond. The questions have a right or wrong answer, or they can be an opinion of the student. Other students can then respond giving their opinion on the original question or other students comments. A librarian did an example of this on her blog.

One last usage is to have students actual make the posts themselves. This can be for a specific yearlong topic, or just an assignment. The school newspaper going digital is an example of this.