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Web log |
Web logs, or Blogs as they are commonly called these days, provide a brilliant way to publish chunks of text, headings and links on the web. They can also feature pictures. There are several tools available to help with this but probably the simplest to get to grips with is Blogger, a member of the Google stable, and once it's set up, you can just type what you want or paste in text from existing documents. The particular advantage of this type of tool is that you need no web skills at all and all the design and linking is taken care of for you. Blogger Go to the Blogger start page which has a nice 1-2-3 guide to creating your blog. You need to provide a name for it. This is quite important as it will feature prominently so use something like the course title or topic name. As it can cover several sessions or topics you probably won't want to be too specific. Another important name is the text that will become part of the blog url or address. This takes the form http://title.blogspot.com. You may be lucky and choose a title that is also available as a web address but it's likely that you'll need to come up with a different one here. As you'll need to use the address for links (and maybe recall it for other use fairly readily) try and use something like course-initials, college-course or course-2007 if you find that others have already nabbed your first preferences. Spaces and most special characters are not a good idea, most will be rejected anyway. You'll find it may take a few tries to get an address but a bit of invention and creativity should get you over that hurdle. Most of the questions you are then asked are either pretty obvious or have default answers you can just accept at this stage - but for the time zone and date display it is recommended that you set GMT and UK format. One you have chosen a template and answered these initial set-up questions your blog is ready for your entries. It is called 'posting' so you'd use 'new post' for each article, set or section of notes. |
