TOOLTIME BLOGGING WITH WORDPRESS

TBTE 415 Tom Hammond, Fall 2007 Demo tool presentation   Obligatory wikipedia entry on blogs My summary:  A website  That serves only one purpose ▪ Accept “posts,” text entries (but may include media) ▪ Organized chronologically (i.e., if the newest posts go on top, new posts push old ones down)  And which may or may not ▪ Accept comments on posts ▪ Have secondary navigation to posts, archives, other sites, users, etc. ▪ Have tags on posts Our class’ blog (WordPress) (A) My blog (blogspot) (B)  A teacher’s blog (C)  A school district’s blogs (D)     (Personal stuff) Professional  Providing a chronicle of classroom activities, audience = parents or community (think daily/weekly newsletter)  Supporting a conversation in a community of practice (teachers, students, or just interested parties)  Note-taking (E) Some have bad design (F) Some have questionable content (G)  Some have ads that may include questionable content (H)  Some have inescapable features that link you to questionable content (i.e., other people) (I)   It’s open source (and all that goes with it) Two great options: Use their host or install your own  Using the free host =  Install your own WordPress blog    Single or multi-user  Requires ▪ webserver running PHP ▪ SQL database       http://wordpress.com/ No ads No links to other blogs (except when logged in) Nice supporting features (such as spam filtering) Can be entirely private: log-in required even to read Front end, back end Get it from http://wordpress.org/ Can be single-user or multi-user  Requires:    webserver running PHP  SQL database  (they have recommendations if you want to rent space: http://wordpress.org/hosting/)  Some technical skills (e.g., inputting database connect info, managing back end)  WordPress  WordPress for Beginners  The Famous Five-Minute Install  Alternatives to WordPress  http://www.21classes.com/  Education blogs in action  http://teacherlingo.com/blogs/default.aspx