Once I rolled over on my basic objection to the validity of blogging (what can I say, I was first a Facebooker), the process for navigating the blog hosts emerged as one that complements my learning style: kinesthetic/group/visual.
I suspect many of my students will likely take a similar approach. Here is my process and rationale
1. Reading everything in the course introduction, printed some of it, (then forgot it)
2. Visualizing the intent of the entire course, to get a big picture of where we needed to be in 6 weeks.
3. Emailing a friend much more tech savvy than I, asking for advice on choosing a blog host.
4. Searching various blog hosts and discovered the “best” ones were subscriptions
5. Sampling real people’s blogs, analyzing the templates, the writing styles, and the responses generated.
6. Noting the extras like twitter, RSS, and links to photo sites and websites
7. Reading classmates’ comments on why they chose their hosts
8. Trial set ups at thee sites: blog.ca: too many ads, Wordpress: can’t change the picture header even though you are supposed to be able to. After many missteps I ditched it; went back to blogger.com even though I didn’t initially like the set up, the customizing was easy.
What was I looking for?
a. Easy start up and customizing
b. Controls on access
c. Free
d. Good track record of site maintenance, traffic flows well
e. Friends’ recommendations
f. Lots of photo space
9. Wanting to like Wordpress but when I couldn’t customize even while following directions and getting help, I had to bail. My students would have tried once to customize, then bailed.
10. Setting up the blog site: as soon as I have choices I go crazy. I have to start with the images, colour, font, are extremely important to me. (Visual)
11. Forcing to stop and complete: this is a rough draft. Sites are such time black holes and I have to learn to get in and out or I could be fiddling and picking and exploring the odd an unusual all day...my students will wantto do this too.
12. So far Blogger: Editing is not so easy. I accidently added a picture twice. The only way I could figure how to delete one was to delete the entire post, then re-post and re-add only one picture. Does this seem right?
13. Spell check is lame. I will be typing in Word first. Is this right?
In sum, my approach has been:
read, look at samples, (group), try (kinesthetic), try, try, then read instructions, try, success, try, go to help section, and fiddle (visual) until my time is up.
I haven't played with WordPress enough yet to know how hard or easy it is to change graphics at the top of your page, but I believe that certain themes allow for custom headers. I am goign to be building a blog for my grade 8 homeroom this upcoming year and the theme I chose called PressRow allows for a customizable header. I just clicked on manage themes and there is a variety of options under the theme information. I believe the options depend on the theme chosen. PressRow allows for changing of widgets, extras, the header image, and the style sheet of the page.
ReplyDeleteCertainly the more customization that is allowed can make for a more personally appealing look to the blog. The one thing that I have noticed from other posts, however, is the comment that individuals often find themselves losing track of time when online. I would assume this is becuase they get so immersed in the content and the multiple directions a site can take you.
Dan
Thanks for this Dan.
ReplyDeleteI picked the Ocean theme and tried to upload my own photo and would get to the point where I could crop my photo to the size of the image header, but then nothing happened after that!
I admit my tolerance for frustration is low, which I think makes me a good candidate to test these hosts as my students (non-computer savvy, at risk), carry that same limited capacity.
Your idea that same themes may be more customizable(?) is a good one.
You are so right about black-hole-time-sucking potential of customizing. i have to keep reminding myself..KISS!
Thanks again Dan!
SJ