There are a lot of new things I want to learn during the MYFest experience in the coming months, and I also hope that I can share some of the things I know how to do with others.
And one of those things is......... BLOGGING. During the pandemic summer of 2020, I wrote up a lot of notes based on my work using Blogger and Inoreader to create blog networks in my classes, and you can find all those notes here: Summer2020.LauraGibbs.net.
For full-featured blogging, I still think Blogger is the best way to get started: very low overhead compared to WordPress, limited but useful design options (limited makes it less overwhelming!), etc.
For MYFest, though, I think I am going to focus on an even MORE user-friendly and MUCH easier way to get started blogging, and that is with the popular educational tool, Padlet.com. You might have used Padlet before, or you might not. If you have used it, you might not have realized that it is basically a kind of blogging since it doesn't look like a typical blog. But Padlet really is a blog, and it has the RSS feed to prove it. (RSS is the magic behind blogging and also podcasting, which is really audio-blogging.)
A Guide to Blogging with Padlet. So, I'm going to write a series of blog posts here (posts so far) to show people just how easy it is to try blogging with Padlet. Plus, blogging-with-Padlet is a great way to get introduced to Padlet in general, which is a very useful tool not just for creation, but for co-creation, writing collaboratively with others in group padlets.
For an example of a personal blog in Padlet, see the bottom of this post: that's my own personal Padlet blog for MYFest!
Interested? With a free Padlet account, you can create up to 3 free padlets, which means you can have a blog as one padlet, a sandbox padlet just to experiment and play with, and you might want to use that third free padlet for some other project. For example, maybe you will be interested in doing an open padlet where you invite others to contribute and create the padlet content together with you!
Explore Padlet. To see what that's like, and also how easy it is to post to a padlet, take a look at the MYFest Music Room Padlet. People are sharing YouTube music videos. Sometimes with a name, sometimes anonymously. Sometimes with a short bit of text to accompany the video, or a long piece of writing, or no writing at all. Visitors to the padlet can like the posts, and they can also leave comments. It's all very free-form, and the padlet is open to anyone with the link (although it's possible to restrict a padlet more narrowly based on who can read, who can write, whether reactions or comments are allowed, etc.).
So, are you interested? If you want to give Padlet a try, either as an individual blog or as a group writing space, here's how to get started:
Start Your Own Padlet Blog:
Sign up at Padlet.com. Choose your log-in and create a password. You can then get up to 3 free padlets; there are paid plans also which allow more padlets and more storage space for materials you upload at your padlet like images, etc.
To get started, click Make a Padlet.You'll see that there are lots of different layout options. For a blog, the Stream format is the most blog-like. (But you can also experiment; if you decide you want to change from Stream to Wall or vice versa later on, you can do that; just like you would expect with a blog, the design and the contents are separate so that you can let the design evolve as you go.)
Padlet will then prompt you to review the basic settings, like the title and address of your padlet, the wallpaper background, etc. You can allow comments (or not). When you're done choosing your settings, click next, and then... your padlet-blog will be ready to use!
You'll also want to look at the share settings, which you can access from the upper right-hand corner of your padlet. That is where you can make your padlet public, and also where you can designate visitors as "read only" (unlike a collaborative padlet, where visitors typically can add to the padlet themselves). By default, padlets are set up so that visitors can add posts, but you can change that so that only you are writing posts as your padlet-blog.
After you're done with the settings, you can add your first post! To add a post, just click on the pink plus button in the lower right-hand corner, or double-click anywhere in the space. That opens the post editor. You can type in a title. Then start typing in the text area below. When you highlight text you have typed, that brings up the text editor. I'll have something more to say about the different editing options later.
And here's my own personal Padlet blog for MYFest:
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