Cynthia Vaskis

SLM521 – Spring 2004

Course Module Assignment

4/22/04

File: bloggmod.htm

This Module’s objective is to help you make a decision about which blog site to join for the best price per feature. Many sites are or will be offering blogging since it is another way to get you to pay for a service they can provide. Which site is better at providing the best features for the best price? By looking at several sites, reading about their various ways to create blogs with specialized features, the student should be able to identify features that are common to many and those that are only offered by a few. The student will compare the cost per feature or the cost per quantity of the feature (such as amount of memory available for a blog window’s use). Through that comparison the student should be able to select the best priced blog package from a best blog web site. The student will also be asked to find the worst priced (most expensive) package from a worst blog web site.

A Blog is a shortened term for Weblog which is a website used to keep an online journal or diary. They are text based (not an HTML file) so it makes it easier to maintain them and edit them. You can use them to communicate with your remote family or friends. This Module will compare different blog websites that allow you to sign up to blog. Some have very good tutorials and common question/answers that can be viewed at any time. They offer different features and documentation to help the person create different kinds of blogs. You can set up your own categories of blogs (friends, family, sports, hobbies) and restrict others from making comments in selected blog areas. There are many ways to tailor your blog sites and documentation explaining all of it.

As more and more web sites offer blogging as a free or a paid subscription there are too many choices to consider. The free blog sites are easy to sign up for but notice the amount of personal information they try to collect before you can blog. They mention that you will see advertisements on the free sites and they ask for your email address, regular address, birthdate, etc. Check out their privacy policy before signing up for a free site or your email’s in-box may be flooded with unwanted messages. The paid prescription packages offer different amounts of memory and additional blog names so that you could have many blog windows going at one time. These paid blog packages also don’t have advertisements. One blog site mentioned below pays you to blog everytime someone reads your article or what you blogged.

Blogging is becoming an important fad that is providing a voice for the individual to speak to the world without being a politician or a published author. The concept of blogging is simple but can be tailored in many different ways by the features offered by the blog web sites. The student will read about a particular web site that offers blogging to gain an understanding about all of the features of blogging. Then the student will be able to make an educated judgement about the data to be collected in the Activity tasks below. The Angelfire Web site has been selected as an example because it has extensive documentation on blogging. The student will also seek out additional blog sites using their favorite search engine.

The Angelfire website has a very good blog definitions list, blog tailoring descriptions, and feature documentation. See their Web site and read their documentation about Blogging. The Angelfire web site offers free blogging as well as paid monthly subscriptions with an initial start-up fee. To learn more about the FR (free) version of Angelfire Blogging click here.

The Angelfire website has a price versus features, or comparison, chart of the basic offered features per price plan. Compare the different Angelfire Blogging plans. If you sign up for a paid subscription plan you can customize your blog window’s features. See the Main Features list that describes what is offered in the various plans. Learn how to customize your blog comments (Angelfire’s Blog Customization Tutorial).

If you want to try to sign up for any of the plans see the sign up page at Lycos for Blogging. Try the FREE Angelfire Blog labeled FR or click on the icon below in the Some Places to Start Blogging list to get to the sign-up page. It gets you blogging and then you can add more disk space and send larger items like images later if you sign up for a monthly charge account. The Angelfire web site allows anyone who joins to have a blog domain name (account) but it has advertising on your page. Only paying subscribers avoid the advertisements and can create multiple Blog domain names and have more memory space.

Many people are writing about blogging and its potential use in the future to communicate an individual’s ideas to the world at large. An article on joining knowledge mining (KM) with storytelling and blogging discusses a new way to share knowledge with others.

Some Places to Start Blogging

BLOGGER - The leading weblog publishing tool.
http://www.blogger.com/

Fotolog – Free photo-blog to share your photos with the world.

http://www.fotolog.net

Blogit – Blog and get paid every time someone reads your article.

http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Redir/Blog.aspx

Sparkpod – Offers a 60 day free trial blogging period.

http://www.sparkpod.com

Internet Search on “blogging” query results

Learn more about blogging by looking at the following results below from a www.msn.com search query of “blogging” which are organized by topic to help you find the most useful information.

Articles to Read

Siemens, George (2002). The Art of Blogging – Part 1 Overview, Definitions, Uses, and Implications. Elearnspace everything elearning., December 1, 2002, Retrieved April 22, 2004 from www.elearnspace.org/Articles/blogging_part_1.htm

Siemens, George (2002). The Art of Blogging – Part 2 Getting Started, “How To”, Tools, Resources. Elearnspace everything elearning., December 6, 2002, Retrieved April 22, 2004 from www.elearnspace.org/Articles/blogging_part_2.htm

Shachtman, Noah (2002). Wired News: Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of . Wired News, June, 6, 2002. Retrieved April 22, 2004 from
www.wired.com/news/school/0%2C1383%2C52992%2C00.html

Top 20 Definitions of Blogging(subscription). Internet Marketing Reference, December 9, 2003, Retrieved April 22, 2004, from http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/

Blogging Web Sites Index

Blogging and Weblogs -- Writers Write(R) - Site Index. Blogging Books. Blogging News. Blogging Resources. Discussion Board ...
www.writerswrite.com/blogging

Web sites to purchase books

Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content at Amazon - One of the best computer books I've read! This book hits the mark on blogging! Biz has such a straight forward style it's like he's speaking to you. He doesn't take himself too seriously and it ...
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735712999

oreilly.com -- Online Catalog: Essential Blogging - With weblogs or blogs exploding all over the Web, the only thing lacking for power users and developers is detailed advice on how to choose, install, and run blogging software. Written by leading ...
www.oreilly.com/catalog/essblogging

Places to Find Others Who Blog

blogging ecosystem

The Morning News - Headlines (303) s c. 63. Blogging Ecosystem (296) s c ...
www.myelin.co.nz/ecosystem

This module will have the student look at several sites that offer blogging and compare their dollar values for five different features offered in their blogging environment. Some possible blog sites are listed above in the Some Places to Start Blogging list. The student is to read through the set of Angelfire Web site blogging documentation and Web articles listed above. They need to check the blogging documentation at four other Web sites that offer blogging. The student should be able to explain how blogging works and many features (more than ten) that are available across various blog sites. The student should have already read through some of this material by following the hyper-links in the Readings and Discussion area above.

The assignments or tasks are listed below that should guide the student to be able to make comparisons between blog site package features and select some best and worst blog site packages.

Task 1 - The first task is for the student to choose at least five Web sites that offer blogging and compare their features with the price tag for each feature. Use several search engines to locate the sites that offer blogging. Then look at the documentation at each site to determine what features are available and for what price. List at least five different features that are available for every blog site selected and list the cost per feature if available. You can select features from the topics listed below or find some on your own by reading the blog site’s documentation and create a features available list.

Some features to consider are:

Memory size limits per cost in dollars

Number of blog domain names per cost in dollars

List free features as well and show whether that blog site has more advanced versions for a price.

Rate the amount of documentation available to setup and use the blog site (poor, average, good, or excellent)

Task 2 - Then use your features available list again and pick some basic features that all the blog sites have in common such as amount of memory for a certain price (free is a price also of zero) and the number of blog names you can have for a certain price. Build a summary chart or table listing your selected five features in the left-most column and list at least five web sites that offer blogging across the top of the columns. Enter in the table’s cell spots the price per amount of the feature such as $20 for 100MB of memory per month would be $20/100MB/month. If the Web site offers more than one dollar amount per feature (such as dollars/memory size/month) then list them vertically within the table’s cell for that feature in this example “amount of memory in MBs”.

Task 3 - When you have completed your comparison chart select two Web sites and their packages that are the best price for that feature. Do this for all the features by comparing the cell entries to find the best (lowest priced) blog site and package per feature. Some sites offer different levels of blogging and thus have different features per level. List the best blog Web site and package per feature and give at least two reasons why you selected it.

Task 4 - Now pick at least three features that only some of the blog sites offer. Build another table showing these features in the left-most column and the blog sites across the top of the columns as in the previous table of Task 2. Fill in the table’s cells with the special feature dollar cost versus quantity of the feature (cost/feature quantity/time period of cost charged). If some feature is not available at a blog site then the entry in the table for that feature would be “N/A” (Not Applicable). To know what is not available is just as important as knowing what is available because you can then decide if it is important to you or not. Pick the best priced package for each special feature and what Web site offers it and give your reasons for selecting it. Then select one package and associated Web site that is the most expensive for one particular feature (either memory size, number of blog domain names, etc.) and give your reasons for selecting it.

Using the two best packages per feature allows you to see if one of them keeps showing up for most of the features. That blog Web site is probably the best overall choice. Now you have the facts and can make a reasonable selection so pick your best blog site, go SIGN-UP, and BLOG away!

The student will be assessed by how closely they followed the tasks listed above. The requirements are stated in each Task and full credit is given if all of the assignment is done. A rubric table is offered below to guide the student in understanding what is expected of them.

Tasks	Poor	Average	Good	Excellent
Task 1 – List at least five features common to many blog sites, list at least five blog sites	Lists less than 3 features and less than 3 blog sites	Lists less than 4 features and less than 4 blog sites	Lists less than 5 features and less than 5 blog sites	Lists at least 5 features and at least 5 blog sites
Task 2 – Select at least five blog site features and at least five blog sites to compare. Make and fill in a table with their cost per feature data or cost per quantity of feature (cost/feature quantity/time period)	Selects less than 3 features in the table and less than 3 blog sites. Does not fill in the table with cost data from the blog sites.	Selects less than 4 features in the table and less than 4 blog sites. Only partially fills in the table with cost data from the blog sites.	Selects less than 5 features in the table and less than 5 blog sites. Completely fills in the table with cost data from the blog sites.	Selects at least 5 features in the table and at least 5 blog sites. Completely fills in the table with cost data from the blog sites.
Task 3 – Make comparisons to select two of the best (lowest cost) packages and name their blog Web sites for each feature listed in the table. Give two reasons for each of your two Best blog site choices.	Gives no selections for the best Web blog site and package per feature. Gives no reason for not picking any choices.	Gives one selection for best web site and package per feature but does not give any reasons for those choices.	Gives two best sites per feature and gives simple reasons for those choices.	Gives the best two Web site choices per feature and explains why they were selected by comparing them with other Web sites that also offer that feature.
Task 4 – Pick at least three features that only some of the blog sites have. List them in a new table with the same Blog sites above the columns as in Task 2. Fill in the table cells with the (cost/feature quantity/charge period). Select the best priced package for each special feature along with its blog site name and give your reasons for selecting it. Then select the most expensive package for one special feature and give its package name and web site that offers it and why you selected it.	Select less than 2 special features and does not fill in the table with the features versus cost data. Does not fill in the table completely. Gives only a few or no best choice selections for each feature. Does not give any most expensive blog site package.	Selects less than 3 special features and does not fill in the table completely with the features versus cost data. Gives best Web site and package for some of the features but not all of them and does give the most expensive blog site package.	Selects 3 special features and fills in the table completely with the features versus cost data. Gives the best Web site package for all of the features. Gives the most expensive blog site package. Gives minimal or no explanations for those choices.	Selects at least three special features and fills in the table completely with the features versus cost data. Gives the best Web site package for each of the special features and gives an explanation for the choice that involves comparing the best choice with the other choices. Gives the most expensive blog site package. Gives a detailed explanation for that choice.

Turn in your blog charts and best and worst blog site selections in a file either via an e-mail message as an attachment or FTP the file to the college’s web site and hyper-link your work to your index file page. Notify your teacher as to how you have done this.