A blog is the perfect way to share your learning journey with future teachers or employers. Your blog can be formatted in whatever way you’d like and you can include a whole range of media as part of it. It might be the place you store all of your other portfolio evidence, or they might only form part of the narrative, or perhaps this is a separate thing all together – either way, this guide will help you make it.

So, what is a blog? A blog is a series of written, visual, audio, or video entries that comment on a person’s experiences, thoughts, or activities. The blog might have one single focus or shifts as the author adds to it. The important thing about a blog is that it is added to regularly and gradually creates an account of the author’s life.

This guide is going to offer prompts for you to think about and possibly reflect upon. As a blog is a record of a personal journey, we aren’t going to tell you what you need to include, instead, we are going to try and be the inspiration when you need it. But to begin, you need to make some decisions!

As there are different kinds of blog-posts, we need to know what kind you will make. It is possible for your blogs to include a range of different post types. Your options are:

List-based: a list of entries that are not necessarily connected and just appear in chronological order without any formatting, curating, or thematic divisions.

News-based: The blogger highlights a key story or events and provides their comments or perspectives. This could be an account/review of one of the workshops.

Interview: The blogger uses the experiences of other people and presents them as part of a wider narrative on a given topic – this allows for greater perspectives to be shared.

Review: this type of blog provides reviews on things, often providing some demonstration of how they work.

Personal: In a personal blog the author discussed their own experiences and builds a kind of timeline of events. For the purpose of your blog, this could demonstrate the development of your skills.

Explainer: Provided detailed accounts of something, such as a workshop, talking the reader through the experience of taking part.

Image-based: focused on images – this could be an infographic, a collage, montage, or single image with or without explanation.

Before you begin, we need to set up your blog. There are a number of excellent websites that you can use as hosts:

www.wix.com offers a simple to use blogging service. You can either complete a questionnaire and it will do the set up for you, or you can take complete control and do it yourself. Full details on how to use Wix can be found here:

www.wordpress.org while it is considered to be the very best amongst blogging sites, you need to do a lot of building yourself and there is limited functionality on the free version. Some schools do have an educational license though that might give you full access. Full details on how to use Wordpress can be found here:

www.blogger.com has been around for a long time and while it might not be an up-to-date as those above, it offers the most simple and reliable approach to blogging. Full details on how to use blogger can be found here:

Pick a blog name. Now, remember, this is for future employers/educators so make sure it is fun but not inappropriate!

Now we have set up our blog we can start to think about populating it. Let’s start with some broad questions...

My blog’s theme is going to be.....

It will have at least …..... entries.

You can now think about writing a nice welcome to your audience. Perhaps you’d like to include some personal details about you? Or a list of key words? Or an outline of what to expect? Whatever you choose, make sure it is engaging and makes them want to read more!

Now let’s think about a blog post. You may want to return to this list of prompts for every post you write. It might be that only some of these prompts are relevant for this particular post, and that is okay, but try working through them and see what you create.

The workshop I am reflecting on is.....

The skills I am going to cover in my blog post are.....

My audience is for this one is.....

The post will be …......long

I’ll make it visually interesting by........

In what ways might I use sound?

I’ll think about critical thinking by.......

I’ll think about creativity by.......

I’ll think about collaboration by......

I’ll thinking about communication by.........

I will review......

I will explain.......

I’ll share my experiences of.......

Blog Instructions

Wix:

1. After creating an account, you will be directed to the home page. Click the ‘Create New Site’ button and select the blog option.
2. There are two ways to make a blog on Wix:

• Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) will design your blog based on your answers to their design questions. This is the quickest and easiest method.
• Wix Editor where you drag and drop elements to create your own template.

1. Once you have named your blog and added (or skipped) any features you would like, you will be prompted to review and edit your information. When you are finished, click the ‘Next’ button.
2. Wix ADI will generate homepage designs for you to choose from. You can also drag and drop any component you like, making your blog fully customisable.
3. Once you are happy with your blog, click the blue ‘Publish’ button.
4. In the ‘My Sites’ tab, you will see a list of all the websites/blogs you have created; click on the blog you have just made. This will display the ‘Dashboard’ menu where you click the ‘Blog’ button.
5. This will display the ‘Posts’ page. Click the blue ‘Create New Post’ button in the top right corner of your screen.
6. This will lead you to the content editor page where you can write your blog post. You can add images, videos, and hashtags to your blog post.
7. On the top right corner of your screen there is a ‘Post Settings’ button. Here you can add an excerpt and cover image, as well as editing the author’s name. You can also add your post to an existing or new category in your blog.
8. Once you have finished writing your blog, click the blue ‘Save’ button at the bottom right side of the screen.

 Blogger:

1. To start your blog, click the orange ‘Create Your Blog’ button in the centre of the screen. This will prompt you to sign into your Google account.
2. Once you have signed in, you can create a name and URL for your blog and choose how your name appears on the blog.
3. You can customise your blog in the ‘Layout’ and ‘Theme’ tabs on the left side of the screen. There are hundreds of themes to choose from and you can remove, add or edit gadgets to change the layout.
4. Once you are happy with your design, click the ‘New Post’ button on the left side of the screen to start a blog post.
5. Add the post title at the top of the screen and write your blog post. You can add images, videos, and URL links to your blog post by using the task bar at the top of the screen.
6. In ‘Post Settings’ on the right side of the screen, you can change your location, publishing details, and your comment settings.
7. To preview your blog post, click the white ‘Preview’ button on the top right side of the screen. Once you are happy with your blog post, click the orange ‘Publish’ button on the right side of the screen to publish your blog post.

 Wordpress:

1. Once you have installed Wordpress, you can start to set up your blog.
2. In the task bar on the left side of the screen, you will find all tabs you need to edit your blog. The ‘Media’, ‘Pages’, ‘Comments’, ‘Appearance’, ‘Plugins’, and ‘Tools’ tabs will allow you to choose a theme, add images and videos, edit the blog functions, and add different components.
3. Once you are happy with your blog, you can start a blog post by clicking on the ‘Posts’ tab and selecting ‘Add New’ from the menu.
4. You will be prompted to add a title for your post at the top of the screen.
5. Below the title, you can start adding content to your post using the ‘Blocks’ feature. To add a block, click the black ‘+’ button on the top left corner of the screen or on the right side of the screen. 
6. To edit a block, click on the ‘Settings’ button on the top right corner of the screen and select ‘Block’. This will provide advanced editing options for all blocks such as ‘Colour’, ‘Text’ and ‘Typography’ settings.
7. To add images, select the ‘Image’ block for a single image or ‘Gallery’ block for multiple images. To add videos, select the ‘Video’ block. To add audio, select the ‘Audio’ block.
8. To add a featured image for your post, click the ‘Settings’ buttons at the top right side of the screen, select ‘Post’, open the ‘Featured Image’ tab and click ‘Set Featured Image’.
9. To add your post to a category, click the ‘Settings’ button and open the ‘Categories’ tab. You can add tags to your post in this section as well.
10. To preview your blog, click the white ‘Preview’ button on the top right side of the screen and to publish your blog click the blue ‘Publish’ button beside it.