ASSETT

This article is a continuation on our series looking at different ways to create class websites.  Blogger was originally a small site created by a tiny company (and by tiny, I mean 3 people) during the late 90’s whose original intent was to give a voice to any internet user. After gaining a certain amount of prestige, Blogger was bought by Google in 2002.

It now has hundreds of thousands of users who use the site, from news networks and journalists to individuals using it for personal narratives and journals. Blogger allows anyone to create their own “blog”.

A blog creates a website organized around dynamic information, called blog posts. ASSETT’s website, which you are reading from right now, is an example of how pages would look when using a blog as the central way to organize information.

To create a blog follow these 3 steps:

1. Create a Blogger account with your basic information
2. Name your Blog and chose your URL
3. Chose a template for how you want your blog to look

You can easily control who can see your blog. This means you can create a private blog that can be used specifically by you students and not by outside visitors. However, you can only have up to 100 private readers to your blog. If you keep your blog public, anyone on the internet would have the opportunity to see it.

You can also choose which of your posts can be commented on. Blogger can automatically inform you when a comment is made on your post and allows you to accept or delete them if needed. There equates to a certain amount of time spent on maintenance

Not moderating comments could help bolster conversations between students and, if your blog is public, lead to valuable contributions from the rest of the blogging community. Nevertheless, if you’re not moderating, there is a larger chance of off-color comments to get through.

You can add additional information to your blog by using “gadgets”. Gadgets are applications you can add to your site that allow you to display many types of information. There is a wide selection of third-party-created gadgets (which means they were created by a company other than Google).

Out of the 360 or so available, some useful gadgets include:

• Polls: ask your students a question
• Count downs: count down to an important due date
• PDF Man: convert documents into .pdfs to post to your blog
• Get Answers:  start a discussion and get feedback

The appearance of your blog can be customized to fit your style and needs. You have ten theme options that you can further customize by choosing different fonts and colors. You can also arrange how your gadgets are laid out on the page by picking the columns and order in which they appear.

Blogger, unlike many free website creators, does not place advertisements on your published blog. This allows your site to be purely academic focused, with no third-party distractions that would otherwise be included without your consent.

Creating a blog can be useful for all disciplines: from a math professor who simply wants to reiterate the assigned homework, to an English professor who wants to continue a classroom discussion outside of class. There is even a place for foreign language educators who can use the transliteration feature to type their language into the blog. (There are 41 languages you can type in.

– Written by: Kaity Hauge, CU ’13, Research Assistant

Tech Ideas class website, Teaching technology, Web 2.0