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CARRY ON BLOGGING

Content and purpose of the blog

You can use your blog as you like, for example:

for your favourite rant
to explore a real-life problem
to record and analyse personal experience
as a piece of coursework / to contribute to your course theme
to 'publish' writing you've already written - and get comments on it from other students
for political activism

How to do it

A lot of people prefer to prepare their individual blog pieces (called 'entries' or 'posts') in a Word document on their own computer - then copy and paste into the blog and publish. This means that, if there are any technical problems, you still have the original and can try again.

Use the COMPOSE box to 'post' your piece. When you have got your post ready in draft, press SAVE at the bottom and then press PREVIEW at top right to see what it looks like. Press COMPOSE again to come back to the post box. Add LABELS at the bottom - these are key words or concepts. Press PUBLISH to post online.

More advanced blogging

Across the top of the blogging box, there are a number of functions (font, bold, italics, colour, etc). You can apply these to any words, phrases or sentences in your piece by highlighting the words in question and then clicking on the function.

When you get more confident, try adding a photo (image) and one or two links to other website pages (using the URL or http://…. address).

Photos - you can upload from your own computer (using the browse box) or click LEARN MORE to find photos you can use from the web.

A friend from the younger generation is usually helpful if you get stuck.

Even more advanced

To add in other elements like blogroll, labels etc on the sidebar:

When you sign in and arrive at Dashboard click on LAYOUT instead of POSTS. This takes you to the Template. Click on 'Add a page element' and you will be given various options. Play around a little to see what you can add. You can also rearrange the new elements by dragging the little boxes up and down.

A work in progress

If you don't like what you've blogged, you can always change it.

NB But if anyone changes their blog name, please let everyone else know!

Who's reading your blog?

You can put a free visitors counter on your blog. This will give you information on where people are visiting from and which posts are most popular. Only you will be able to access that information.

(Your blog is live - someone other than the class may read it!)

Go to this link and follow the instructions to install the stats function:

http://www.statcounter.com/

Session Notes for Ideas Online

Don't forget the session notes can be found on my website at

http://www.patriciadaniel.org.uk/MA_materials.htm

If you want to look at what we did in class or do further reading online, the links to all the sites / articles are there - easy to click on rather than typing the whole link out again.

Debate online: Quality versus Equality on the Internet

Don't forget to take part in the debate at http://writingdemo.blogspot.com

Happy blogging!

Last updated 12.11.2007