2. Blogging is as Easy as 1, 2, 3

Now that you’ve done some exploring around this blog and understand how this program will work, it’s time to set up your very own personal blog in which to begin recording your thoughts, discoveries and exercises.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Your blog should be work friendly. For the duration of this project there will be work related content on it and your coworkers may read it. After the tutorial is over, it doesn’t have to be about work, but readers should be comfortable reading it at work.
2. Your blog posts should be at least 100-150 words each week - we’d like to have a conversation and the more you post, the better the conversation will be.
3. How you choose to identity yourself on your blog is your choice. You can blog under a screen name, anonymously, or as yourself.

For this project we recommend that you use Blogger, a popular free online blog hosting service that is extremely easy to use. Blogger is owned by Google, so you can use your Google account (or create a Google account).

Creating a blog using Blogger takes just three steps:

1. Create an account
2. Name your blog
3. Select your template.

Ready? Go to it.

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

Resources

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
• Blogger.com Tutorial (Ohio State University)

Exercise:

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com/

2. Click on “Create Your Blog Now”

3. Sign in if you already have a Google account. Otherwise, fill in your email address, password, display name (the name used to sign your blog posts), word verification, and the acceptance of terms box.

4. Click on “Continue.”

5. Name your blog and choose an address

• The name is the title that displays at the top. For example, Estelle’s Thoughts or Estelle’s Rules for Librarianship
• Your address is the URL people will type into go to go your blog, they do not have to match. For example your address could be estelle123.blogspot.com
• It may be hard to find an address that’s available, you may have to try several and use the “Check Availability” link
• Be sure to also write down your password and blog address

6. Click on “Continue.”

7. Select your template.

8. You’re ready to start blogging!

9. Create your first post. Post your thoughts about lifelong learning (Thing #1).

Once you’ve created your blog here are 3 important things to know:

• To add posts: The maintenance interface that you will use to add posts, edit or change the step-up your blog is accessed online at http://www.blogger.com/
• Use your email address and password to sign in
• To view your blog: Your blog address is http://(xxxx).blogspot.com, (xxxx)=the unique identifier you entered in Step 5 above.