DIGITAL STORY & ABOUT BLOG

What is blog?

A blog is a frequently updated online personal journal or diary. It is a place to express yourself to the world. A place to share your thoughts and your passions. Really, it’s anything you want it to be. For our purposes we’ll say that a blog is your own website that you are going to update on an ongoing basis. Blog is a short form for the word weblog and the two words are used interchangeably.

Blog (noun) – a journal or diary that is on the Internet.

Blogger (noun) – a person who keeps a blog – Bloggers are revolutionizing the way news is shared.

Blog (verb) – to write a blog – I am going to blog before breakfast this morning.

Blogging (verb) – the action of writing a blog – Blogging is my way of sharing my passions with the world.

Originally blogs were known primarily as places for people to write about their day-to-day activities. Their mundane, everyday tasks became fodder for journal entries. Somehow these writers gained a following and the hobby of blogging was born. Today people write about far more interesting topics, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Types of Blogs

There are many different types of blogs on WordPress.com, and they span over 100 languages. You can browse our tags to get a sense of the topics covered by WordPress.com bloggers, or take a look at these examples of popular blog categories:

·         Personal: This is the broadest category and includes blogs about personal topics like politics, music, family, travel, health, you name it.

·         Business: Professionals ranging from realtors to lawyers and stock brokers are using WordPress to share their expertise, and companies have discovered the power of blogs to personally engage with their customers.

·         Schools: WordPress is a great way for teachers and students to collaborate on classroom projects.

·         Non-profits: Foundations, charities, and human rights groups find our blogs to be great tools to raise awareness and money for their causes.

·         Politics: Members of parliament, political parties, government agencies, and activists using our blogs to connect with their constituencies.

·         Military: Members of the military blog to report what they see happening in various parts of the world and to stay in touch with their families.

·         Private: Some people make their blogs private to share photos and information within families, companies, or schools.

·         Sports: We’ve got teams, athletes, and fans using blogs to express and share their passion for various sports.

·         How-to, tips and reviews: There are lots of blogs that share tips and reviews about cooking, games, music, books, movies, and so on.

Blogs that violate our advertising policy or fall into one of the following categories are not allowed on WordPress.com:

·         SEO blogs: Blogs that are written for search engines instead of humans. These blogs are dedicated to trying to fool Google and other search engines into ranking them or the sites they link to highly. WordPress.com is not meant for this type of activity.

·         Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs and get-rich-quick schemes (“Make six figures from home!!”, “20 easy steps to top profits!!”, etc). This includes multi-level marketing (MLM) blogs and pyramid schemes. To be clear, people writing their own original book, movie or game reviews and linking them to Amazon, or people linking to their own products on Etsy do NOT fall into this category.

·         Warez blogs: Blogs that promote pirated copies of ebooks, software packages, music, movies, games, etc.

·         Automated blogs: Blogs that are generated by computers, including randomly generated blogs, blogs that re-publish press releases, marketing material, search engine results, link dumps or any other mass-produced content.

·         Book tour blogs: Blogs that consist primarily of pre-written publicity material, as opposed to original book reviews, for the purpose of promoting books and driving traffic to other promotional and giveaway sites.

Benefits/ Advntages of blogs

There are numerous educational benefits of blogs. Blogs are:
• Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
• Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
• Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
• Powerful tools to enable scaffolding learning or mentoring to occur.

How do we use blogs in education?
Blogs can serve at least four basic functions.

1. Classroom Management

Class blogs can serve as a portal to foster a community of learners. As they are easy to create and update efficiently, they can be used to inform students of class requirements, post handouts, notices, and homework assignments, or act as a question and answer board.

2. Collaboration

Blogs provide a space where teachers and students can work to further develop writing or other skills with the advantage of an instant audience. Teachers can offer instructional tips, and students can practice and benefit from peer review. They also make online mentoring possible. For example, a class of older students can help a class of younger students develop more confidence in their writing skills. Students can also participate in cooperative learning activities that require them to relay research findings, ideas, or suggestions.

3. Discussions

A class blog opens the opportunity for students to discuss topics outside of the classroom. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students have time to be reactive to one another and reflective. Teachers can also bring together a group of knowledgeable individuals for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog.

4. Student Portfolios

Blogs present, organize, and protect student work as digital portfolios. As older entries are archived, developing skills and progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Additionally, as students realize their efforts will be published, they are typically more motivated to produce better writing. Teachers and peers may conference with a student individually on a developing work, and expert or peer mentoring advice can be easily kept for future reference.

Step by step guide to start a blog