Monday, April 8, 2013

Blogging Applications for Beginning Bloggers

For those school leaders just now venturing into blogging, you can easily use the web application offered by services such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress. These apps will get your posts done, but if you are just starting to blog and want an application that might make the act of posting a blog a bit more painless, Microsoft's Live Writer and ScribeFire are two options to consider. Livewriter, which is available as a free download, and the App/Exyension Scribefire both give bloggers, and I would add first-time bloggers the tools to get started. I have used both of these apps and found them a practically "glitch-free" approach to blog posting. Both are availble for free as well.
Microsoft Livewriter
  • Includes a blog post editor that allows you to see exactly what your post will look like on the web site.
  • Works with multiple blog platforms. (I use it with Blogger.)
  • Interface is quite familiar to current Microsoft product users.
  • Save blog posts locally. (On Your Hard Drive)
  • Extensive formatting control of text


Windows Liver Writer Interface
To get more information and download Windows Livewriter, check out the web site.
Windows Live Writer Web Site

ScribefFire
ScribeFire is a blog post composing app for use within FireFox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari Browsers. While not as "featureful" as Live Writer, it is still fully functional, and for the novice blogger, it will do everything you need to do.
  • Fully featured in sense that it will do just about everything you would want to do in a blog post: insert photos, insert YouTube videos, insert tables, etc.
  • Interface has a simple layout that works right within your favorite browser.
  • Font Choices and sizes along with basic text formatting



For more information on ScribeFire, check out their web site.
ScribeFire Informational Web Site

Both of these blogging apps are good, solid choices for the school leader just venturing into blogging.
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2 comments:

  1. Tom WaltonApril 19, 2013 at 4:15 AM

    I'm not familiar with either of these two (but wonder if it wouldn't be better just to start straightaway with Blogger or WordPress, as they would seem to be that much more powerful).

    Two things you don't address which I think are important: (1) can you export from these two to B or WP, perhaps later? And (2), for education, do they they have a full array of privacy settings?

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    1. John Robinson Ed.DApril 19, 2013 at 6:48 AM

      My reasoning for suggesting these two applications for blogging is twofold. One is that in my experience Blogger's online software is often buggy and frustrating to use at times. And second, if you have no Internet connectivity, the online apps are not available. By using these two solutions, you can compose blog posts while offline and post when you get connectivity. It is also a simple process to save a copy of my posts to the hard drive with these applications. Both of these applications work with either Blogger or WordPress, and you can save your posts and post at later times. As far as privacy settings, you have the same level of settings you would for any desktop program that you use.

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