2: Building Your Blog

Now that you’ve done some exploring around this website and understand how this program will work, it’s time to setup your very own blog to begin recording your discoveries as you progress through the 23 Things.  For this program, I recommend that you use Blogger*, a popular free online blog hosting service that is extremely easy to use.

Creating a blog using Blogger takes just three steps:

1. Create an account. Use your school email address. The "Display Name" can be anything you want.  How you choose to identify yourself on your blog is your choice. You can blog under a screen name, anonymously, or as yourself. 
2. Name your blog.  Be creative.
   
3. Select your template.

Once you’ve created your blog here are two important things to know:

• To add posts: The interface that you will use to add posts, edit or change the step-up of your blog is accessed online at http://www.blogger.com.  Be sure to write down your login and password.
• To view your blog: Your blog address is http://(xxxx).blogspot.com. (xxxx)=the unique identifier you entered in Step 2.  Be sure to also write down your blog address.
  

If you run into problems or would like more information about blogs and using Blogger here are some discovery resources you can use:

• Blogger’s Quick Tutorial  (Just follow the orange arrows to learn more about Blogger.)
• YouTube Video on using Blogger
  

OK -- Now, it’s your turn...


Discovery Exercise:

1. Setup a blog for yourself through Blogger.
   
   
2. Add two posts.  (This will cover Thing 1 and the current Thing--Thing 2.)
   a).  Your first post: As your first post, you can write about anything you wish. You might explain why you are participating in this "23 Things" project.
   b).  Your second entry: Blog about what interests you about Web 2.0. Go back to Thing 1 for ideas.
   
   
3. Email dvan@ashmi.org the name of your blog’s address.  (For instance this blog is ash23things.blogspot.com.)

* Use of Blogger is only a recommendation. If there is another blog hosting site with which you are more comfortable, please feel free to use it.

<--Thing 1     Main     Thing 3-->