What is a blog? What is blogging?

Combining the terms web with log became weblog or blog for short – this became both noun and verb – to work on your blog site made you a blogger. Historically – started late 1990s and took off in terms of public access and production with the advent of hosting tools such as LiveJournal and Blogger (later bought by Google). At its simplest, it is a web journal; at its most complicated it can be a full website that incorporates a journal style page.

Blogging is the act of writing to the web. But beyond the traditional alpha-numeric symbols for writing, blogging is the act of creating, capturing content, expressing ideas, sequencing actions, or sharing topics of interest. These can be posted to private, password protected, or widely available web content. These blog posts can include the opportunity for readers and/or viewers to leave a comment. Further to this blogging enables linking and connecting to other web content, but particularly to other blogs through permalinks, blogrolls and trackbacks. This, along with search engines [Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc], can support connections to others with similar interests.

What is WordPress

WordPress is a web design tool. It is considered an industry standard for web publication. It is offered free to University of British Columbia students, faculty and staff. For British Columbia educators, some school districts host WordPress on a system level server or shared system servers so the data resides in Canada, thus adhering to Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) requirements.

Where can I set up a WordPress site?

This depends on where you are located, your teaching context and your why for blogging.

1. First discover if there is the option of using WordPress through your school district or system level supports. This is the ultimate and best way to allow students to gain access and be able to blog with you in your classroom. [e.g. Richmond School District getting started with blogs].
2. If this is not an option, consider if you qualify for a free WordPress location within the UBC digital networks such as the UBC blogs available to students, teachers and support staff.
3. Try the OpenETC Free Range Ed Tech site available through a community of educators in British Columbia. Since the data is stored within BC, this is the best option available for you if your why includes the possibility that there will be anonymized student content published on the blog site.
4. For your own professional blog site, you can try each of the above options or move to a WordPress.com site where free web hosting is included, but be aware that some of the affordances of the blog with the free version may not be enough once you become a more sophisticated and proficient blogger. You can use these two resources to get you started 1. Getting Started with WP.com [web site with embedded videos]; and 2. Create a free website with WordPress.com – Complete Tutorial [video, 48:00 min].

Where can I find other educational bloggers?

This curated list by Doug Peterson is one that will get you started, but consider this only a starting point since this is a curated listing for an Ontario educational context. [voicEd Radio Blog Roll]. This listing can also be an inspiration for creating a blog title since that is embedded into the URL of the blog site.

For a UBC MET (Masters of Educational Technology) related listing, the Scarfe Sandbox is one of many possible models [MET Community Blogs].

Edublogs is included here because it is education focused and grounded on using WordPress for blogging. You can begin by checking out the 2015 Edubloggers award winners list. Consider carefully if you sign up for a free account, since the blogs and blog content resides on servers outside of BC, but you get access to additional blogging lists. You can access openly available supportive blogging resources [The Edublogger] which includes student blog prompts, ten types of blog responses, getting started, list of online prompts for student blog posts, and a whole lot more!

Let’s build a better curated list of BC educational bloggers!

• Build it here!