Beginning Academic Blogging

Blogging is still a very new medium, and my students who have kept blogs have mostly kept personal ones. How does one get up and going with a good academic blog? There are some technical aspects, but the most important thing is developing the habits of digital literacy that accompany the best uses of blogs (rather than going by print-based habits that aren't always in keeping with the online environment).

Technical Basics
We are using the Blogger platform, for which there are ample tutorials and help pages available online. I tell my students that if the interface is new or confusing, first look up some of those aids and then ask help of fellow classmates. The basics for just posting are simple enough. My students are working off of blogs already created to which they've been invited to be an author, so they do not have to create or set up the blog fresh (though tweaking the design is something to take on soon).

• Get onto Blogger.com 
• Navigate the dashboard
• Create a new post: title, body, basic formatting (including adding in links), using the jump break if their post goes beyond one screen, and adding labels to a post.
• Add an image to a post

Post Length

While Google+ posts should be very short (more quick updates than developed thoughts), blog posts should be longer (a rule of thumb: 100-400 words to start with). Of course, that length is less than two typed pages, double-spaced. It's relative. A good rule of thumb to go by is not to go beyond a screen, or else to front-end what you are saying, since it is a small percentage of those who browse blogs to read past the first screen. (Note that I am violating that rule of thumb right now. There are occasions that justify longer posts, especially as you get into drafting a paper or developing a project. When you do longer post, just be sure that you use the important jump break feature, as I am doing right here before giving further instruction on blogging: