Category:Blogs

What is a Blog?

A blog (short for Web log) is a website that can be used to share ideas, resources, experiences, and collaborate online. Blogs can be created by anyone with Internet access and offer instant publishing to the Web. Users may post information on the blog website which is displayed in reverse chronological order. A blog supports many media elements including text, hyperlinks, images, and video. Posting information to a blog or wiki is similar to using a word processing application and is relatively easy.

Instructors are having students create blogs for writing and reflection as well as group projects. The continual use of a blog can increase students’ writing skills. Blogs promote interaction and discussion by allowing readers to post comments on the page. Most blogs are typically created and maintained by individuals, however, groups can also share blogs when working on projects.

How to Choose a Blog Service

UCF provides a simple blog tool under discussion under Webcourses@UCF. To enable the blog tool in Webcourses please refer to the Create a Blog or Journal Discussion Topic under Discussions on the Webcourses@UCF FAQs and How-Tos on our Teaching Online web site.

There are several free third party blog services available for use on the web. These services offer greater functionality than the blog tool available in Webcourses@UCF. The one major disadvantage to these services is the lack of integration with Webcourses and the gradebook.

Listed below are a few popular blog services:

• Blogger – http://blogger.com
• Edublogs - http://edublogs.org
• Tumblr – http://tumblr.com
• Google Sites – http://sites.google.com

Choosing a blog service can be very difficult. The links below provide information to help make this decision a little easier by comparing the various features of each blog.

• This article titled "Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool?" provides information about several different blogs.http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/
• Blogging Comparison Chart: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm