blogshop

Blogs and RSS WebQuest

"Blogs and RSS- Tools for Creating, Collecting, and Sharing Ideas Online" , presented as a WebQuest:

"Learn about tools that will forever change the way you gather information online and separate the online publishing from the technical hurdles typically associated with running a web site"

This has your basic components of a webquest, a task, process, evaluation, littered with resources (a number point back to this dog) and activity templates... you will also find easy to follow steps for creating and beginning a Blogger blog.

It was created by Trevor Ettenborough for a local conference for k-12 educators- the AzTEA 3rd Annual WOW conference.

Zempt Blog Editor

Here is a new desktop editor for MT bloggers- Zempt. I can say that my blogging is much easier, using ecto (on Mac OSX) as an editor rather than the MT web interface. There is a now a beta of ecto for Windows. Zempt may have promise too as I am planning to turn some new faculty onto blogging and most are using PCs. (Zempot 0.3 is for Windows, a 0.5 version is planned for Mac).

Jill Walker's Blog Review Assignment

Jill Walker has shared a blog review assignment for her class of 50 blogging web design students at the University of Bergen.

I've had a few requests for the text and grading scheme for the blog review assigment I'm currently grading, so I've translated it into English, all the better to share it and hopefully contribute to this kind of assignment evolving further so I can improve it next time I teach this course.

This is a great model for faculty looking for a structured assignment to have students get introduced to weblog features and writing styles. Her assignment includes a grading rubric too.

It is modeled after another excellent assignment, Scott Rettberg's Blogs on Blogs Web review developed at Richard Stockton College.

We need to see more of these shared among edubloggers.

MovableType Tutorials

A quick bit of Googling for a colleague we just set up in MovableType who was looking for more information about customizing the blog site.

Not exactly.

But here are some nice starting points:

Creating a Blog with MovableType... a beginner's guide

"This tutorial reviews how to create a blog using Movable Type (MT) and is based on a DigitalEveJapan workshop I taught on March 15, 2003. A kind of 'blogging for dummies,' it is aimed at the beginner and assumes little knowledge of website design/building. However, programmers and other web gurus unfamiliar with blogging may find it useful."

Movable Type templates tutorial
The venerable Mark Pilgrim dives into templates.

And there is the wiki-ized version of this BlogShop, courtesy of Brian Lamb at UBC.

"Blog on Blogs"- excellent educational example of weblog use

Blog on Blogs, a Weblog Review does double duty as a great resource for getting a handle on weblogs and a wonderful example of using blogs in an educational context, a New Media Studies course: Seeded with a visit by weblog scholar Dr. Jill Walker, Blog on Blogs outlines the nine factors that instructor Scott Rettberg had his students frame their "blogged" reviews of other weblogs: Indentity, Design, Content, Time, Linking, Blog Roll, Inbound Links, Discussion/Comments, and Audience Analysis. The students' blog reviews are organized into categories of 'Classic Bloggers', Comics Blogs', 'Digital Culture Blogs', 'Fiction/Writer Blogs', 'Food Blogs', 'Group Blogs', 'Persona Blogs', 'Photoblogs', 'Political Blogs', and 'Stockton Blogs'. This is an excellent example of using the media (a weblog) for a compelling student assignment about the same topic (weblogs). More so (to me) than creating say a PowerPoint about blogs, or a Word document about blogs. Blog on Blogs, get it? Like BlogShop?

MT Wiki

Here is a nice resource for MovableType-rs, The MovableType Knowledge Base is a wiki chock full of tips and suggestions. it is well written and a worthwhile bookmark for anyone dealing with setting up MT or going beyond the basic templates. See for example a description of TrackBack or the overview of MT Templates.

Kung-Log: MT Blogging a Mac OSX App

Kung-Log is an application that allows you to post and edit my MovableType blog directly from a friendly Mac OSX interface. Not only can you do this easily, it offers an HTML editing menu, image/document uploads, spell-checking, preview in a browser, and a bunch more. Very useful indeed. Continue reading "Kung-Log: MT Blogging a Mac OSX App"

Top 20 Definitions of Blogging

Still confused on the "b" word? Try the Top 20 Definitions of Blogging:

Okay, I am a bit wary as this is coming from a marketing web site and it features links to seminars about making money from blogs. But Debbie's list of defintions should at least generate some neural activity and she provides a few good references.

And she did ignore probably the most comprehensive and unbiased defintion from Jill Walker.

Jill Walker Talks Blogs

Jill Walker writes in her blog on a talk at brown:

She provides a good array of examples of blog writing styles, discussion of the community aspects of blogging, the potential impact for students, but here is what I like:

This means that it is not just pen to paper writing when we blog, it is thinking about the networked environment (hypertext links, writing for an unknown audience, the presence or lack of context, the communication tools of comments, credit links, trackback, rss..). Pretty much of what I see in our organization is a print based mentality when it comes to electronic communication- we send electronic regurgitations of print documents.

Think web; write web.

Canadian BlogShop

Recently Brian Lamb and Jim Sibley conducted a Canadian Blogshop at the University of British Columbia, and plentifully acknowledged the materials in our BlogShop from down here in the far south Canadian hinterland province of Arizona ;-)

Actually the UBC version takes it a notch further by posting the workshop materials in a wiki. I liked their idea of creating a BlogLines account with RSS feeds from the workshop and it's participants' play-blogs.

However, I must admit being a bit scared at the look of Jean the Blogging Grad Student.

See also Ginger's Blogs in Education "This page is designed to provide you some resources if you want to get started using blogs for yourself or with your students. The use of blogs in instructional settings is limited only by your imagination." It is worth checking out if only for the graphic of "The Blog"