December 2005 — Features
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Why Blog?
Go Forth and Blog
If blogs still intrigue you, there should be little stopping you from starting
one. There’s nothing mystical—or even highly technological—about
them. Blogs are all about communication: between teachers and students, teachers
and parents, and students and students.
What makes a good blog? One that gets read. If your blog has no readers, you
might as well keep a diary. Fortunately, an educator has a captive audience.
Parents and students want a steady stream of up-to-date information, and teachers
need them to have it. Therefore, a well-kept blog is an ideal way to satisfy
everyone.
—posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 @ 11:59 pm
Tools for Blogging Starting your own blog? These software and service packages can be a big help. Blogger Free to use and recommended for anyone trying to blog for the first time. Blogger is now owned by Google (www.google.com) and is the largest blogging publishing service. Blogger is very easy to use, even though it requires using its navigation bar if you use its free hosting service, blogspot. You can avoid that, however, by simply hosting the blog on your own Web site (publishing it via FTP). Blogger also has good tutorials on what blogs are, in general, and how to set them up. Plus, you can browse the blogs of others that it hosts. www.blogger.com TypePad A paid subscription service with blogging tools and hosting included, TypePad costs from $5 to $15 per month. More features (typical with paid services) and customer support are included here than with free services. www.typepad.com Movable Type From the same company that sells TypePad, Movable Type is aimed more at organizations and businesses, and is probably worth considering by schools and districts that want a more professional blog-publishing tool. This is software, not a service. Education pricing starts at $40 and goes higher, depending on features and number of users. There’s a comparison of TypePad and Movable Type at www.sixapart.com/decision and more information about Movable Type at www.sixapart.com/movabletype. Blogware Blogware is a paid subscription service that’s actually resold by others. Packages and costs vary with Blogware retailers. www.blogware.com Manila A combination Web log and Web site publishing software package, Manila weighs in at roughly $1,100. This is what Galileo Academy of Science & Technology uses. manila.userland.com
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Frank Catalano is currently Pearson Education’s senior VP for Marketing, US Assessments and Testing Group. He was responsible for launching Pearson’s first two blogs: www.truescores.com and www.PearsonPASeries.com/blog.
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