February 2004 — Features
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Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'
Getting Started With Blogs and Blogging
There are several blogging solutions for the classroom, with some more expensive and involved than others. The least expensive solution is to adopt a free Web-based blogging service. SchoolBlogs (www.schoolblogs.com) or Blogger (www.blogger.com) both offer free blogging software and hosting services via the Internet. Creating a blog on most of these free services takes less than five minutes and many provide a multitude of options such as Web-based editing, public and private blogs, support for plug-ins (e.g., adding comments), and various templates. Most sites also have created FAQ and "Blogger Basics" sections to help with technical setup.
If an institution is willing to host blogging software on a locally maintained server, one might consider implementing products such as Movable Type or Radio UserLand. Both solutions offer more features than the free services such as the ability to add comments. Movable Type (www.movabletype.org) is free for noncommercial use and Radio UserLand (http://radiodiscuss.userland.com) user licenses are inexpensive. Other online blogging resources include:
