Blogs are a class of web sites that promote personal publishing of ideas, news, progress, and reflections. Blogs are maintained through a web interface that allow an individual to publish content that automatically organizes posts, provides channels for feedback, and produces a site feed of recent content. People generally create a blog to communicate with an audience on a given theme or topic.
The blogging phenomenon really took off with the 2004 presidential election when Howard Dean brought the blog to mainstream America as a major piece of his campaign's communication and fund raising system. Blogging has permeated most areas of popular culture as people are using blogs to communicate with friends and family, as sources of news, in education, to form communities around a personal interest, etc..
The diverse application of blogs is also prevalent at Allegheny as blogs are used as departmental websites, for personal writing and reflection, in support of the study abroad experience, tracking projects and committee work, project development, and classwork.
Blogging has established itself as a cornerstone of Web2.0 culture because of its ease of use and ability to connect people with one another. Thus, blogging will be central to our Learning 2.0 project. Become a blogger by completing the following tasks.
Task #1: Get a blog of your own and post to it.
Task #2: Send us the URL of your blog for inclusion on our home page.
