Blogs are Egocentric!

There is a lot of interaction happening on this blog, but when you come to the page it looks like just me posting my thoughts and suggestions. You don't see the interaction unless you read the comments on each post.

This is something to keep in mind when choosing the right tool for your teaching or other objective. Blogs are designed to be one person's or organization's view of the world. One way around it is to create a team to produce your blog. You can create a new account for your blog (a new Google account) and give the user name and password to your team - students, colleagues, etc. Then anyone on the team can post to the blog.

Alesha's blog for Proliteracy does this. Each author signs their post at the bottom. Would this work with students? Would it only work if people had distinct assignments and timelines?

If you visit Alesha's latest post, there are some comments in another language. Try copying one of the comments and let Google Translate detect the language and translate it.

Dealing with Foreign Language Content

Laura asked a question about receiving a comment on her blog in a foreign language. You can usually get some idea of what is being said by copying the content, even if it isn't in roman alphabet, and paste into Google Translate. Translate will even help you figure out what language it is if you aren't sure.

Sometimes it will be spam, so be careful not to click any links left in comments unless they are from a trusted source. I delete a few comments a week from my blog that say things like "Very interesting blog post. Please visit my education site at www.drugs4u.com."

Anyone have experience with Google Translator or other free translation services, and want to make a recommnedation?