Using a Weblog as an Educational Tool

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Using a Weblog as an Educational Tool

• Reinhard Wieser Teacher Training College,
  Innsbruckwww.pa-tirol.tsn.at www.pa-aktuell.tsn
  .at/blog.helsinki

2
Overview

• Introduction
• Tools we are using for our English course for
  teachers at agricultural schools
• What is a weblog?
• What is Wordpress?

3
About myself ?

• 1985 - 2003 Commercial college
• 1998 - today also employed at In-Service Teacher
  Training Institute mainly for CAI!
• 2000 - today employed at Pre-Service Teacher
  Training College (PH Tirol)
• Since 98 free-lance writer
• Since March 2005 fully employed at PH Tirol
• Comenius network RIAC
• CAI English courses
• International office

4
Resources for teachers

• Since 1999 Tirolean School Network
• Nearly all schools broadband
• TSN hosted by a company owned by the local
  government
• Services (free for schools/teachers)
• Mail, WWW, subdomains, video servers support
  hotline
• E-learning platforms (Blackboard, Moodle)

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Wordpress

• Apart from using it as a blog
• Can be used for small medium websites
• Can be used for online portfolios
• Online portfolio
• Names of authors created by system
• Date created by system
• Archives created by system

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English Course

• For agricultural teachers who want to acquire
  additional competences
• 4 instructors, 13 participants gt 3 semesters
• Basic platform Blackboard (hosted by university,
  license fees)
• Portfolio Wordpress (hosted in Tirolean school
  network, free)

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What is a weblog?

• Weblog form of a Content Management System (CMS)
  
• Weblogs and CMS gt website
• Weblogs small CMS, mostly used as online
  diaries, but some are versatile!
• Weblogs
• Commercial blogs blogger.com etc.
• Open source blogs Wordpress.org etc.

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Wordpress tech talk

• Open source software no costs
• Requires LAMP server
• Linux
• Apache web server
• MySQL database
• PHP
• Installed in 2 minutes
• Based on CSS technology, RSS feeds

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Wordpress - Publishing

• After the installation
• Tool ready for use (except structure and content
  link categories, imprint etc.)
• Package various designs or "themes, 100s of
  themes can be downloaded
• No programming required
• Various user levels administrator, editor,
  author, etc.
• Pages, links, archives created automatically

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Links

• Download it from here
• English version www.wordpress.org
• Finnish version http//kimmo.suominen.com/sw/word
  press-fi

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• Thank you for your attention!