Angie Dickson, our new librarian, is an fan of the PE blog Phil Rowland set up for this academic year and wants to set up her own. Not only can she use this blog to communicate with students at our school, but with librarians and heads of information services worldwide!
Here’s some examples of some great (newbie-friendly) blogs in the field:
I’ve been contacted by four different postgraduate researchers in the last two weeks. It’s getting to the stage where I’m considering setting up a new website/discussion space! A couple of them just wanted permission to use some of my stuff in their theses, one is already a member of the Edublogosphere, but one asked a very pertinent question:
My stumbling across some of your postings last night was my first trip in the edublogosphere. What else is going on out there?
As you can imagine, I hardly knew where to start! As I like to reply to emails ASAP, I replied thus:
Find some blogs to read. My Google Reader shared items might be a good place to start. Also try the big names in the edublogosphere – search for Stephen Downes, Will Richardson, Vicki Davis, Ewan McIntosh, and Dave Warlick. 🙂
Get yourself a Google account and use Google Reader to subscribe to the RSS feeds of blogs (don’t know how? click here)
Start using Twitter. At first you’ll think “What on earth…?”. After a while you’ll find it indispensible.
Start blogging yourself. Doesn’t matter what, but start making links with people. It’s the conversation that counts! Try edublogs to get you started. 😀
There’s a Hebrew proverb that I’m sure almost every educator will have heard before: “Do not confine your children to your learning, for they were born in a different time.” The same could be said of the Edublogosphere. I can hardly recommend that people start by using the same tools I did when things have moved on so much in the last 3-4 years! What would YOU recommend?
This Sunday, EdTechRoundup will be discussing just this issue – how to get started in the Edublogosphere – from 7.45pm onwards. Please do join us and give your input. The session will be recorded and go out as a podcast.
If you can’t make it, or just want to get the conversation going before then, please add your comment below! :-p
Last month when I opened up our credit card statement, I looked with horror at the amount I was being charged for webhosting. It said that MediaTemple, my current web hosts for this blog, learning.mrbelshaw.co.uk, edte.ch and historyshareforum.com were charging me almost £20 per month for the privilege. This, apparently, is due to the ‘amount of MySQL activity’ on my account. 😮
Last summer, I transferred from Bluehost – with whom I’d been very happy – due to MediaTemple’s well-publicised ‘Grid Hosting’ and their ability to host domain names such as .ch (needed for edte.ch). Now, however, I find that my websites take longer to load, their customer service is below average, and they’re over-charging me.
I’d love to simply go back to Bluehost. That’s not really an option, however, due to their inability to host .ch domains. I had a look at going with HP-backed and much-advertised One.com, but they don’t allow ‘download-related’ sites – historyshareforum.com is for the sharing and downloading of resources.
So I’d like your recommendations please. My criteria are:
Good value (i.e. reasonably cheap!)
Good customer support (quick response time)
Support for a wide range of domain extensions
Ideally, I’d also like the servers to be based in the UK. It makes fast loading times of the websites for the majority of my visitors more likely, you see… 😀
Angie Dickson, our new librarian, is an fan of the PE blog Phil Rowland set up for this academic year and wants to set up her own. Not only can she use this blog to communicate with students at our school, but with librarians and heads of information services worldwide!
Last month when I opened up our credit card statement, I looked with horror at the amount I was being charged for webhosting. It said that 