WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
This is a blog, which derives from the term ‘web-log’. It’s a simple WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) way of publishing information on the Internet. You simply type in the content (as I am doing now) and your pre-selected style(s) and theme(s) are applied automatically. The easiest way to set up a blog is to use a free service such as Blogger (owned by Google) which guides you through the process and lets you host your blog on their servers. If you want to host it on your own servers later on, there is also the option to do that. The only major downside to this service is the frame they put at the top of the site with ‘next blog’ etc. on it. Another way is to install blogging ’software’ on your web server. This is what I’ve done here with this blog and is what I hope to develop next academic year with my AS-level class. I’m using Wordpress but there are others which you can try-before-you-install at opensourcecms.com. 
Users can automatically find out if there are updates to your site by using RSS feeds. Software (including Mozilla Firefox) can on the user’s computer can tell when a ’story’ on your site has been updated and alert them to this without them having to constantly check your site. For more detail on RSS check out this BBC page and the Wikipedia entry.
Popularity: 3% [?]
There’s a great blog by someone who’s experimenting with this over at http://oletango.blogspot.com/
it looks a bit odd, but stick with it, and it’s really useful.
I’ve been trying it this year with my year 13 students, if you want to take a look then visit www.podesta.org.uk/coldwar
The site you link to certainly is a bit odd - but as you say his views on ‘learning ecologies’ sound interesting!
I like what you’ve done with your Blogger-powered Cold war blog. The wiki sounds interesting as well!
Blogs really are easy to set up and I would recommend any teacher head over to Blogger.com or even use the extremely easy-to-use MSN Spaces
Blogging seems to be the way forward and certainly appears to be easy to set up if one has the right tools available. Many teacher are just beginning to realise the Blogging potential (including myself) and it would be fantastic if someone (nudge nudge) could explain how people can set up their own e.g. using popular software and not only netbased ones which can sometimes be filled with ads and pop-ups.
Any takers?
Consider it done. A guide will appear on this site soon. I use Wordpress, probably the most popular blogging ’software’, so I’ll create a guide on that…