Thing #3: Set Up a Blog...and Make an Avatar

Now that you’ve done some exploring around these webpages (this blog) and understand how this program will work, it’s time to set up your very own personal blog to begin recording your thoughts, discoveries, and exercises.

Note: This Thing has lots of parts. Please read the WHOLE thing! Thanks, The Kickball Captains

Background of Blogging

1. View this short video from the CommonCraft guys that explains blogs "in Plain English."

if you can not see the video from this blog, go here and watch it.

2.View this PowerPoint for an overview of a blog's format and see some samples of different types of blogs you may encounter during this experience.


3. Read The 4 Cs of Blogging, a post about what to think about when setting up your blog, how to approach what you might write about, and how you will respond to others' thoughts.


4. Read 2¢ Worth David Warlick's posting on the value of edublogging.

Creating Your Blog

For this Discovery Activity, you may use any one of several free online blog hosting services including Blogger, Wordpress, Class Blogmeister, or Typepad.

We are recommending Blogger. It comes through the district firewall, is consistently available (no down time), and is also supported in Atomic Learning where (if you are a SBISD employee or resident) you can get additional help with the program. Take the Quick Tour of Blogger for a look at it before starting.



To start your blog:

1. Create an Blogger account. You will need a gmail account. It does not need to be a gmail account, but can be. We recommend that you use this gmail account as you register for other activities throughout the program.

2. Name your blog. The portion that goes into the address is "permanent." It can not be changed once set up. The blog title that appears on the actual page can be changed or updated to meet the needs of your blog. A good rule of thumb...short and sweet and easy to type!


3. Choose a template (or skin.) You can always go back and select another one if you don't care for the look of your blog.

When setting up your preferences, please allow for comments by anyone. You CAN set it up where you have to approve them before they show.

MORE HELP with setting up your blog

Remember to identify EACH of your post titles with the word "Thing" & # that goes with what you are writing about. Each Thing should be written in a separate post.


Now that your blog is set up:

1. Go back to Thing #2 and write (in a new blog post) your thoughts regarding the habit among the 7 & 1/2 that is easiest for you and the one which is hardest. Include any other thoughts about lifelong learning.


2. Create an avatar -- a representation of yourself.
Go to Yahoo Avatars and create a character representing things about yourself. Here's a chance for your creativity to come out! Have fun!

3. Save your avatar and export to your blog.

HELP: Here's how to export your avatar to your blog.

a) When you are on your Avatars.Yahoo.com page, go to "home" tab and look to the right column.

b) One of the options is: "EXPORT/Download your avatar" Click on Export.

c) Under the words "Yahoo Avatars," click DOWNLOAD.
click on the download button under JPG. When the popup window comes up, choose SAVE and save the file to your desktop.

d) Go to your blog (Sign in. When you first sign in, there is an option to add a post OR manage posts, settings, or layout)

Go to "LAYOUT." You will see Add a Gadget on your sidebar. Scroll down until you see Picture.

Add your avatar here. Advice: do not use the "Add a gadget" at the top of your page to add your avatar...it will get in your way!

e) Then move that GADGET to wherever you want your avatar to appear on your blog side bar. The gadgets can be moved up and down the side bar.

NOTE: Save your avatar ONLY as a jpg file (picture) --- the option to save it as HTML no longer works in Blogger.

3. Write about the process about setting up your blog and your avatar in a Thing #3 blog post . Have you looked at anyone else's blog...have you made a comment or ask a question?

Seems like a lot here, but you are over the hardest part and ready to write about all the new things you will be seeing and doing. Have fun!

Thing #12: Creating Community Through Commenting

The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs according to the article about blogging from Wikipedia. A blog is a vehicle for a group of people with common interests to communicate, share, and learn in spite of barriers of time and distance.

Read How to Comment Like a King (or Queen!) from Cool Cat's blog.

Read 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog

Read The Ten Commandments of Blog Commenting oops! this link is no longer available. Searching for replacement.

Blue Skunk has some comments about commenting. Incidentally, he pretty much responds to every commentor of each of his posts! In another post he asks "Are you contributing to the general discussion?" He feels commenting is "a unique characteristic of blogging - that it can be more dialog than sermon."

Meredith Farkas of Information Wants to Be Free has an interesting response to the idea of sharing information through commenting...even if you do not feel you have worthy thoughts!

Drape's Takes has something to say about commenting as a part of his Edublogger Etiquette series.


Here is a short post about commenting using an alias vs. your real name from Blogging 101. You can read many other posts about commenting. There is a podcast about lurking and commenting. Listen if you wish. It is useful information but is rather lengthy.


Discovery Activities:
1. Think about the various points made about successful comments from the above readings. In the post about this Thing, explain two of the points that you think are important.

2. Since commenting has been described as essential to the purpose of blogging that includes community building and interaction, choose at least five different Library2Play blogs and make at least one comment to each.

3. Find two blogs about a subject of personal interest (Google Blog Search!) or from the blogroll of any blogger you read. Comment on these two blogs that are not a part of the Library2Play community. In your post about this Thing, explain what drew your attention to these blogs.

It is understood that you may want to do some of this commenting at different times during this 23 Things experience.
Create the post as usual and as you find new things to comment about, come back to the post, use the edit feature, and add your new thoughts.
OR
Do your blog post about this activity later. As long as you label the post with "Thing 12," it does not have to appear in numerical order.

Thing #14: Technorati and How Tags Work

Now that you have been working with blogs for awhile, it is time to look at a search engine that is specifically for searching blogs for their content. That would be Technorati, a portmanteau (or morphing) of technology and literati or intellectuals. as of August, 2007, it has indexed over 84 million blogs.

There are a lot of features in Technorati including the capability to search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, limit a search by language, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like book reviews or libraries).

Background information:
1. View the blog from Technorati. View the tags used to categorize the information included in the posts.
2. Watch this video of the leadership at Technorati talking about their "product."

3. Read this blog post that discusses tags and tagging in things like Technorati, de.licio.us, amazon.com, and the effect it is having on advertisers.


Discovery activities:
1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “School Library Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
3. Create a blog post for Thing #14 and express your thoughts regarding how Technorati and its features could assist you. Since you have now looked at several tools that use tagging (Technorati, de.licio.us, & Flickr), add your thoughts about the value of tagging information

Optional:
1. Register and claim your blog. It will increase the traffic that visits your blog.
2.Explore the various Technorati widgets that you could add to your blog.

Tag was a fun childhood game...hope tagging has now become a fun "learning" tool!

P.S. Did you realize you are 2/3 of the way through the 23 Things? Yipee!!
Have you taken a look at some of the other Players' blogs, read some of their posts, and commented? Please be sure you comment to some of the thoughts expressed by your fellow Players...commenting is an important part of the interactive web world!

Thing #22: Nings

Ning is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks, launched in October 2005. Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. Ning is Andreessen's third startup (after Netscape and Opsware), and gets much of its notability from Andreessen's successes with those companies. Ning hopes to compete with large social sites like MySpace and Facebook, by appealing to users who want to create networks around specific interests or have limited technical skills. The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own custom social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific audiences. At its launch, Ning offered several simple base websites developed internally and by members of a closed beta. In late September of 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose. Later, these three templates were superseded by a single customizable template aimed at allowing non-developers to more easily customize their copy of the social website. However, Ning does allow developers to have some source level control of their social networks, enabling them to change features and underlying logic.

Read 7 Things You Need to Know About Ning.

The bottom line is that a Nings is a social networking tool that allows you to collaborate with people in your field of interest from all over the world. There are many different things you can do in a Ning, and there are many different Nings out there that cater to specific interests. So go out and explore these online "group gatherings" to see what they are like and the advantages of belonging to one.

Here are three Nings to try looking at:

Educator Ning

Future of Education Ning

Ning for Teachers

Teacher Librarian Ning

Texas School Librarian Ning

Discovery: Go to either one of the Nings above or find one that intrests you and look at the different features and options then write a blog post about what you think a Ning would be good for and how you might use it.