Blog Article Published

I mentioned this recently but didn't post the actual text. A little background first.

One of my co-workers sent out a message to our company's bulletin board, asking for help from anyone who was involved in, knew of, or was a blogger and blogging. She wanted help to possibly create an article in the Texas PR Express, a newsletter TASB publishes for public relations folks in the Texas education system. I read the solicitation and volunteered. The end result is below. It doesn't have much character or any of my personal "voice," but it is 90% mine. I also have a PDF file that retains the original formatting as well as a sidebar containing some links to blogs that I felt would be useful for this audience to know. They are Glenn Reynolds, Doc Searls, Weblogg-Ed, TexasISD, Jim Romanesko, and Blogcritics.

Asked and Answered: What is a Blog? by Charles Hueter, Administrative Secretary

Today, information can be disseminated many ways; newspaper, radio, television, and the Internet. The Internet alone provides a multitude of information vehicles, one of which is called a blog. Blogs are created and maintained by bloggers. When someone is working on a blog, they are blogging.

What is a blog and why use such an odd word to label it? The term slowly evolved during the late 1990's as shorthand for Web log, which is the Internet's equivalent of a personal journal. At its most fundamental, a blog is a section of a Web site that is updated frequently with commentary from the author and links to other Web sites. Think of a combination of the news ticker on CNN and the op/ed page of a newspaper. The blog's operator finds something interesting, posts a link to the material, and adds his or her thoughts. In many cases, the blog is also programmed to allow reader comment.

What are the advantages of blogging?
Blogging is an inexpensive way to publish information. No printing or mailing is necessary. Most popular blog software is available for free, and there are free hosting services devoted to blogs. For example, Blogspot, located at http://www.blogger.com/, offers free web hosting and free blog software that hundreds of thousands of people use every day. Another website, http://www.typepad.com/, sets users up with and hosts blogging software from Moveable Type - the most popular standalone software http://www.movabletype.org/ - for a range of small monthly fees. Another super huge mostly-free blogging community like Blogspot is LiveJournal, which is at http://www.livejournal.com/. Personally, I use Moveable Type installed on a private Web hosting service. These and many other services out there are created with the beginner in mind, allowing for an ever-increasing set of features and ease of use.

If you've created a blog, it can be updated at any time anywhere there is an Internet connection. Blogging doesn't hog bandwidth, so it won't choke a dial-up modem's connection.

Blog posts are easily subdivided into subject categories and archives for simple browsing. Of great importance is the ability to go back to an old post and add new information and updated links. This ability to self-correct and still leave the original information up for viewing eventually creates a large historical database for reference.

How can a blog be useful in a public school?
Dissemination of calendars of events, press releases, daily notices, homework assignments, and other information a school district needs to deliver to staff, students, or the community can be accomplished on line with a blog. Add in the ability for readers to comment, and a community can develop around the blog.

Low cost and interactivity are what gives blogs their advantage over traditional Web tools. Blogging keeps readers up to date and provides a referenced, indexed databank that is easy to use and cheap to run. It's a funky term for a powerful method of information circulation.

This article originally appeared in the January 2004 issue of Texas PR Express, a publication of the Texas Association of School Boards. Reprinted with permission.

Kinda neat. I wish I had more space, but that's how the "dead tree" world works. My editor left open the opportunity to work with her again.

Posted by Drizzten at January 12, 2004 12:56 PM