Lessons
Below gives an outline of recommended lessons in completing your blog project. It is aimed that these lessons break up the task into manageable tasks that follow a logical order. However, it is encouraged that you experiment as much as possible with the features of the blog authoring tool you choose. Experiential learning is an underused learning methodology at every level of education and should be encouraged as it allows students to become independent learners, take risks, be enterprising and progress at a pace comfortable for themselves.
Introduction Lessons
Lesson 1 – What is blogging? In this lesson you must gain an understanding of what blogging is all about. Click on the link What is blogging? as a starting point then doing your own research find out a little more by using a search engine such as Google. Then finally use your knowledge to write a paragraph to explain what blogging is.
Lesson 2 – What do people blog about? In this lesson you will search for blogs written by other people and start to think about what your blog might be about. It could be one about your hobby, about your favourite sports team, about you or if your a creative writer an online diary for a fictional character. Check out the links below to check out all sorts of different blogs:
http://blogsofnote.blogspot.com/
After you have done enough searching you need to write a review of 3 different types of blogs that you have found. Each review must evaluate the blog content and blog design as well as overall usefulness/entertainment/interest the blog provided.
Lesson 3 – Blog topic choice. Now for the big decision. You should now have a good idea what a blog is what other people are writing their blogs about now you have to make a decision what you will make a blog about. The choice is yours. It could be about anything you want, the only limit is your imagination. If you are still struggling here are some ideas:
- A blog about you
- A blog about your favourite sports team
- A blog about your hobby that has tips, latest news and favourite links on it
- A blog about a fictional character that you have created that reads like their diary
- A blog about an issue that is important to you
- A blog where you review books and DVDs
- A blog where you simply comment on world events as they happen
The choice is yours. As part of this task you must write a short summary of what your blog will be about with ideas of what things you may put on it, who your audience is and what the aim of the blog is (to create awareness, to provide information, to entertain, to advise etc).
Lesson 4 - Set up your blog! You can tackle this lesson in two ways. Either just pick Blogger or WordPress and follow the tutorials or give them both am go and then pick the one that you think is best. This will probably take the most time of all lessons as you will be experimenting with the tools in WordPress and/or Blogger so you become a good user. Tip: Do not feel afraid of experimenting as you can just delete what you have just done if it is not right!
By the end of this lesson you will have set up your blog and be posting. Use the tutorial below:
Lesson 5 – Go for it! You have now set up your blog and experimented with the different aspects now it is your task to start posting and add different features to you blog such as videos, pictures, calendars, links to other sites, changing your blog looks and feel. You must make your site look professional and try to get people to visit it. Even though this is Lesson 5 you should consider this as an ongoing task as truely excellent blogs will have updated information on it tempting your audience to keep coming back.
Lesson 6 – Evaluation. In this task you must explain how you tackled this whole project. What went well, what could have gone better and what you found interesting or not about blogging. You must say whether you think you may continue blogging and highlight some of the skills you have learnt.
Lesson 7 – Create another blog. How about a revision blog or something completely different to your first one above.
Extension Task - If you have completed the above have a go at creating some graphics for your blog and inserting them using a graphics package called GIMP. Follow the tutorials by clicking the tab above called GIMP or click here.
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