Blog+Considerations

=Some Things to Consider if We Choose Edublogs or WordPress 2.0 as Our Blogging Platform= (Some or all of this info could possible apply to the other blogging platforms. I am not as familiar with them)

Install Firefox
Teachers who are part of the blogging iniative should probably have Firefox installed on their computers. The current version of IE is not web compliant (W3C). Consequently, it will not display properly (or sometimes not at all) for many of the new Web 2.0 web-based applications. One can display and work with WordPress using IE; however, they recommend using Firefox.

Install a News Aggregator Software
Teacher who are a part of the blogging iniative should have a news aggregator like Feed Reader installed on their computers. This will allow the teacher to subscribe to her students' blogs. That way, she will know when a student has published a post without having to visit each blog to find out. The blog essentially comes to her.

Use of Personal Portals Online
Another alternative to a stand alone news aggregator like FeedReader (or in addition to it) teachers could use an online personal portal site like [|ProtoPage], [|SuprGlu] or [|PageFlakes]. There are many other sites like this. Some are free; some are not free.

These sites allow a user to subscribe to blog feeds where they will be displayed on the personal portal page as opposed to having to visit each blog. The (+) aspect of this over a stand alone like FeedReader is the site can be accessed from any computer. The (-) aspect of this over a stand alone is that the software like FeedReader can actually notify you when a new blog entry has been made. One has to actually visit the online site to ascertain if a new blog entry has been made. Either way, I think they are both useful and will save the teacher a lot of time.

If we decide to go with an online personal portal like the ones mentioned above, we will need to make certain the site is not blocked by the firewall. If you'd like to see a [|SuprGlu page in action go here]. If you'd like to see a [|ProtoPage in action, go here]. If you'd like to see a [|PageFlakes page in action, go here].

Make Use of PingBacks
This is not a requirement...but will allow a teacher's blog and all of her students' blogs to be more easily interconnected. Pingback is like remote commenting. For an illustration of pingbacks. [|Please visit this page].