In another recent post I discussed some of the reasons for making use of a blog in your language teaching.  I won't repeat that here except to say that whether you use a blog as a teacher to manage class materials, or for your students as a  way of practicing and developing language skills, there are many good reasons for using a blog.

That said, the question that remains is how can you set up a blog for you or your language students to use? The answer to this question is reasonably simple.  You have two choices

1. use a free blog service
2. set up a blog on your own domain name (this costs a little, but really not much at all).

Both of these options have advantages and disadvantages which I'll go over next.  After that I'll introduce some of the most popular blogging platforms that are suitable for language class use.

Using Free Blogs for your Language learning blog

There are a number of free blogging platforms that are available for you to use in your language classrooms.

Pros

• easy setup and no maintenance of the underlying software
• can set up multiple blogs easily (e.g. one for each student in a class)
• service providers (e.g. google's blogger) are well known and generally popular with general population
• they are free

Cons

• some display ads in order to 'pay' for the service
• you are not in control of the system
• your account can be shut down sometimes quite arbitrarily
• blogs on services like blogger and myspace are very common targets for spam posts/comments
• quite basic functionality, and little ability to extend the functions
• they are usually 'branded'

Setting up a language learning Blog on your own Domain

Cons

• some technical knowledge required (but not as much as you might think)
• some cost is involved (in the area of $50/year, which is really not much)
• you are responsible for updating software (if needed, but this isn't very common)

Pros

• your own domain name (my-site-name.com)
• your choice of blogging platform (usually available with a 'one-click' install process)
• ability to extend and modify the features available on the blog (polls, library, calendars, downloads, links pages, podcasts, video casts etc. etc.)
• complete control of content and look/feel of the blog
• no chance of being shut down arbitrarily
• simple to use interface on most of the common blogging platforms

 I'm sure there are other pros and cons for each category that depend on individual needs, preferences and levels of comfort with computers, but for now these give you a basic idea.

Here is a list of the most commonly used blogging platforms (if you know of or already use another tell us all about it in a comment below)

Free Blogs

Blogger.com - this is owned and managed by google.  Accounts are free to set up and one account allows you to run multiple blogs.  This is a good place to set up blogs for an entire class of students.  It is simple to use and very quick to set up.  The main problem is that the blogs are all branded with "BLOGGER", and are very commonly targeted by spammers.

Myspace.com - This is Microsoft's blogging solution.  It is VERY popular, and again quite simple to use.  However it is VERY susceptible to spamming.  None-the-less it is a simple and effective free blogging tool.

Self-Managed Blogs

Both of the following blogs can be either hosted for free using the service provided by the company that created the software, or can be run very easily off your own domain name with almost no technical knowledge.  Most hosting companies provide a way to install the blogging software automatically, so even if you have next to no idea what you're doing you can get going quickly.

Moveable Type -This is one of the older and more popular blogging platforms.  You can set up your own blog on their servers (for free), or get your own domain name and hosting and operate it off of that.

WordPress - This is without question the single best blogging platform available PERIOD.  It is very easy to use, has an extremely intuitive interface, and a HUGE user-base that are very willing to help out in the rare case you've got a question.  They offer a true one step point/click install process.  This is the ONLY blogging software that I use for my websites.

Well there you have the basics of blogs for language teachers and language classes.  There is clearly much more that can be said (like how a tutorial on how to set up a word press blog for example), but that will have to be in another post.

So, if you have questions, or would like me to go into more detail about any of this, drop me a line in the comment section below.

Cheers,

Eric

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