What is blogging (web log publishing)?

The term web-log, or blog, was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997 and refers to a simple webpage consisting of brief paragraphs of opinion, information, personal diary entries, or links, called posts, arranged chronologically with the most recent first, in the style of an online journal. These websites contain written material, links or multimedia. Most blogs also allow visitors to add a comment below a blog entry.

Blogging is increasingly used in education (both in school and university), because it is easy to publish. Blogs facilitate feedback, by letting readers add comments. Blogs have educational uses as student reflection, publishing and sharing portals. Essentially an easy to build webpage, blogs are powerful student learning tools. For teachers blogs can operate as a content management system or more commonly as a professional reflection tool

Blogging software (obtain a free blog):

www.blogger.com	Owned by google. very easy to set up
www.wordpress.com	Powerful blogging software used widely
www.edublogs.org	Especially designed for educators using wordpress software
www.classblogmeister.com	Especially designed for teachers

Example educational blog sites:

Forestry students blog which contains B.Sc. and M.Sc. Forestry student seminar abstracts www.forestrystudents.blogspot.com

Class blog for Forestry B.Sc. special students
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=99657

Forestry and Environment Symposium 2005 - abstracts of research papers http://forestrysymposium2005.blogspot.com/

Blog for students http://www.studentlanka.com