Tag Archives: blogging

Blogging: Learning Experience

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Tylor Moore: How To Make WordPress Website, published on March23, 2015.

Is It Easy To Create A Blog?
The process of creating a blog is quite easy, there are dozens of free blogging sites, bloggers should be aware that these platforms are not created equal and their selection will rely on the desired features required to successfully implement their blogs. No matter the selected platform, it can be set up in minutes and is easy to learn and maintain. Personally, I selected WordPress.com which is one of most popular blogging platform “one in six websites in the world run on it” (Startablog123, n.d.). it has free publishing tool and optimized search engine, and “works for everyone from amateur bloggers to large-scale businesses primarily because it offers a vast array of paid and free custom themes and plugins” (Startablog123, n.d.). I started first with a free “.WordPress.com” domain name “programmingtutor.wordpress.com”, but later I updated to use my own domain name. I relied on videos and online tutorials to learn various technical skills such as planning the blog content, blog design, managing posts, pages, links, themes, plugins, menus, and widgets and more, the process was flexible and user friendly.
Main Characteristics Of A Successful Blog
In my opinion what characterize a successful blog is mainly the design and navigation. It should be simple, standard and responsive i.e. the majority of internet audience won’t find any issues to navigate and access the blog content. A successful blog should have a clear defined focus, the posts should be personal reflecting the blogger opinions and thoughts yet evident based and provide practical strategies or solutions for others to consider, it should also contain diverse valuable resources to aid audience of similar interest. To engage audience, the blogger should keep up and publish at least once each week without sacrificing quality, find posts’ titles that are appealing and catchy to draw people attention and curiosity, use as many images and videos as possible to break up text and add some visual interest, incorporate social media that effectively to reflect the blog content, for example I used Pinterest to display infographics related to various blog topics, and end up posts with a question or a feedback request to enable others share their opinions.
Blogging In Education
Blogging is a great tool that can be used improve educational outcomes (Orlando, 2010, June 7), it is public, and students are more attentive to the quality of their work when it is public than if it is just viewed by one other person. Blogging creates a person-centered discussion and enhances academic writing skills, and encourages student sharing, collaboration and reflection. I started blogging 18 months ago along with my PIDP learning experience, my own educational blog was an more of an individual experience more like a portfolio space to highlight my work. After some time it got to be habitual, a joyful task and not an assignment, it continued into other courses and occasions when I wasn’t asked to blog. I enjoyed sharing a significant learning experience or an opinion that can help others. There is another way to incorporate blogging into educational courses where educators can ask students to work on course or group blogs. In such experience, blogs would be more of shared space for students and instructors to share their work online and comment on the work of their peers which helps to build a community who are able to actively engage with one another (UBC, n.d.).
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