Communication+and+Collaboration+Through+Blogging

=Communication and Collaboration Through Blogging= For this assignment, I was required to create a blog on Blogger.com that relates to my instructional unit. Blogger.com is a website that provides a free service which allows users to create their own blogs. The name of my blog is EDT 2010 - Social Networking in Education. As required, my blog includes a welcome note with a translation into another language (Spanish) below it. Comments are enabled so that my peers can provide feedback and opinions. I have also included a Video Bar, powered by Youtube, which displays videos related to my chosen keyword terms: educational social networking. I have also included two RSS feeds that come from the Ning network that I created for my course so that my students will be able to see the recent activity that happening on the network and the videos that have been uploaded.
 * Description:**

Since I already have an active gmail account, I did not need to create one in order to be able to create the blog for my instructional unit on Blogger.com. All I had to do was simply log in to Blogger.com and create a new blog, which I named EDT 2010 - Social Networking in Education. I uploaded the same banner that I created for my Blackboard instructional unit so that they coincide with one another and to give a feel of consistency. I then created my welcome blog, which gives a brief overview of what the purpose of my blog is. As required, I posted a translation of that same blog into another language. I chose to translate my blog into Spanish, which I did using Google Translator, a free online service provided by Google. I then found the gadget that allows me to add an RSS feed, so I "grabbed" the url from the RSS feed feature on my unit's Ning network. I decided to display two RSS feeds, one for recent activity on the EDT 2010 Ning network, and another for recent videos on the EDT 2010 Ning network. I wanted to add a calendar gadget but that displayed with ads, which are forbidden for this assignment, so I decided against it. I also found a Video Bar gadget, powered by Youtube. I am not sure if it always works properly but it was the only way I could display videos related to my unit.
 * Process:**

Please click on the link below to view the blog for my unit in a new window.

**EDT 2010 Blog - Social Networking in Education**

I can't really say that I learned a lot about Blogger.com while completing this assignment, as I already had previous experience with the Blogger service. I did learn a lot about the different gadgets that are provided and can be added. I also learned a lot about RSS feeds and how to add them to a Blogger blog. There was a bit of frustration in the beginning with adding the RSS feeds but I finally got the hang of it, and once I did, it was really simple! This is certainly a feature that I will be using again in the future. I also really like the idea of using a blog to communicate with your students and to allow them to communicate with each other. It's another great collaboration tool. However, since I created a Ning network for my unit, this feature is already contained within it. Ning members have the ability to post blogs, forums, create groups, and live chat, which are all great collaboration tools. I will likely take what I have learned about blogging from this assignment and apply it to the blogging feature within Ning, as I plan to use Ning extensively for teaching projects in the future however, I will likely not use Blogger.com as a blog archive unless I am //not// implementing Ning.
 * Reflection:**