Wondering Why Blogs? What Are They?

ABOUT BLOGS
 If you have never used a blog before, here are some key terms to understand:
  • Blog. A blog is a website with content that is (usually) arranged by date. You will create one blog for this class and you will be adding new blog posts for each assignment. Perhaps this will inspire you to create blogs outside of this class too! When you can see different blogs online, you will find that they look very different, which is one of the great things about the blog: it's your own personal creation, showing and sharing the work you are doing in class, which is different from what any other student is doing. It's all very individual!
  • Post. Each new piece of content that you add to the blog is called a post, and most of the assignments in this class will result in a new blog post. A post can be just a sentence or two, or it can be something that would be several pages long if you were to print it out on paper. A post can contain text, links, images, and video; most of your posts for this class will contain texts, images, & videos.
  • Template. Most blog software uses a design template so that each post in your blog has the same basic look as every other post in the blog (font, colors, etc.). You can modify or switch templates at any time, changing the design of the blog without changing the content. So, don't worry about the design right now; you can keep on playing with the blog design later until it feels right to you!
  • Sidebar with widgets. Most blog templates allow you to have a sidebar (or multiple sidebars) with content in little boxes that are called widgets or gadgets. Widgets can be just for fun, but they can also be very useful: for example, the labels sidebar widget is how people will navigate your blog. In some blog templates the sidebar displays all the time; in other templates, you click on the bar button up at the top to display the sidebar if it is not already visible.
Blogging platforms. There are lots of different blogging platforms! I recommend using Google Blogger and it's the one we will use for this course. I'll provide all the help you might need to make good use of Blogger. We use Blogger as it meets the requirements of full RSS feed for posts, separate RSS feed for comments, linkable post labels, and no advertisements.

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