Ls. No. 2 Internet Applications - Information on Blog and Forum

BLOGS AND FORUMS

 

 1. The term blog is formed from weblog. It is a personal diary space of a user at a website to chronicle articles, ideas and opinions by posting short and frequently updated text entries. A blog may include news, facts, digital media, links to other web articles and comments by visitors.

2. Types of blogs: Personal blogs and business blogs. The latter can be internal organizational blogs or external corporate blogs.

3. Advantages of blogs: (1) Easy and economical to set up. (2) No threat of spamming. (3) No limits to the number of blogs a blogger creates. (4) Can be searched quickly for any information. (5) Comments can be posted quickly, enabling readers to share their opinions and start discussions. (6) A built-in method to deliver recent posts to various blog search engines helps search engines to list new contents.

4. Disadvantages of blogs: (1) most people are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner, and/ or do not have very much to say that is interesting. (2) Blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain. (3) Crude people post crude comments.

5. Uses of edu blogs or educational blogs: (1) they support student and teacher learning, and provide contexts for higher-order thinking. (2) Teachers can share educational information and

teaching tips with other teachers. (3) Teachers can meet the diverse needs of all students in the classroom by posting tips, explanations and ideas. (4) Teachers can post class announcements, home assignments and class expectations which the students and their parents can access from anywhere.

6. Advantages of classroom blogs: (1) Allow students to voice and share their passions, and gives them ownership over their own learning. (2) Give the students an instant audience, potentially worldwide. This motivates them to write better and take on a leadership role during the course of their learning. (3) By reviewing the portfolio of their own writing, the students can focus on and organize their own learning. (4) Help the students to improve upon their

Social skills, tech-savvies, confidence, and awareness of online safety. (5) Allow students to carry out a data collection activity and arrive at their own interpretation.

7. Steps to create blogs using Google's Blogger: (1) Co to the free blogging website, http://www.blogger.com. (2) Sign in with your Google email ID and password, and click the 'Sign In' button. Else, click the 'SIGN UP' button to create a new Google Account. (3) On the next page, choose a profile, add people to your circles whom you want to follow, and add your photograph. (4) On the Blogger Dashboard, click on the 'New blog' button. (5) In the window

That opens, choose a template, a title and URL for your blog, and click the 'Create blog!' button. (6) Click on the 'Start posting' link, or the 'Create new post' button to compose.

8. Good practices (do's) while blogging: (1) Visit popular and intellectually rich blogs. (2) For your own blog, choose a domain name that is short, and easy to spell and remember. Keep your blog focused (i.e., relevant, short and simple) with authentic information. (3) be ethical and positive, and use a decent language with no spelling or grammatical mistakes. (4) Subscribe to your own blog. (5) Include a contact link button or page. (6) Post views to your blog and reply to comments regularly. (7) Comment on others' blogs.

9. Things one should not do (i.e., the don'ts) while blogging:

Do not:

(1) Blog on unproductive and less useful topics

(2) Post views on multiple topics in the same blog

(3) Repeat the same information that is available all over the web

(4) Copy opinions from other blog sites

(5) Put abusive or offensive matter, rurnours and unauthorized information

(6) Forget to put share and social media buttons on your blogs

(7) Put many advertisements on your blog or have music/video on auto play

(8) Write aimlessly, just for posting sake.

10. An Internet forum is a website where people discuss in the form of posted messages. This creates an environment for discussion and encourages the posting of wide range of opinions.

11. Structure of a forum: Discussions are organized into categories, sub-forums and threads. A thread is a collection of posts defined by a title and an opening post which summarizes the intended discussion. A thread can contain any number of posts and are displayed in the chronological order. The popularity of a thread is judged by reply counts, i.e., the number of posts it receives. A post is a message submitted by a member to a thread. Every post contains the user's details (such as name and avatar) and the date and time it was submitted. The post count is a count of how many posts a certain user has made. Users with higher post counts are often considered more reputable.

12. User groups of a forum: Registered members are organized into members, moderators and administrator(s), and given different privileges and rights. Members can only submit posts to one or more threads, and are allowed to edit or delete their own posts. A moderator (or mod) is a privileged member who can access to the posts and threads for moderating and maintaining the quality of the forum. Mods also block spam attacks. An administrator (or admin) manages the technical details required for running the site. An admin changes the ranks of members and moderators, manages the rules, creates sub-forums, makes forum-wide announcements, as well as performs any database operations, and occasionally act as moderators. Only admins can change the skin of a forum. An unregistered user is known as a guest or visitor. Guests are granted limited access-to only view the contents of the forum.

13. Features of a forum: (1) Password generated trip code (2) Avatar (3) Signature (4) Attachment (5) Emoticons (6) Personal/Private message (7) Polls (8) Ignore list.

14. Advantages of a forum: (1) Intellectual topics and high quality discussions create lots of useful information and tips. (2) With useful information and productive discussion, members stick to the forum and strengthen it. (3) Credibility in the community can result in fruitful relationships.

15. Disadvantages of a forum: (1) Establishing a good discussion board can be quite difficult and can take a long time before the webmaster can enjoy the benefits of increasing traffic or profits. (2) Administering and moderating posts to maintain a forum requires a lot of time.