Saturday, June 2, 2007

Blogging with Grandma

My mother-in-law writes a family note every week and sends it out via e-mail. She lets us all know what she has been up to, sends us pictures and also updates us about each other. I recently suggested that she set up a blog as a better way to communicate with all of us. She can write her weekly notes as blog entries and post and share her pictures. We can comment on her blog and the whole family can see our comments. Finally, we can add her blog to our aggregator and read it along with the rest of the news we regularly read. There are many free blogging services, I'm using one of them right now, that are easy to set up and use. Check out this great wiki on blogging for lots of ideas and resources.

You may be asking your self "What is an aggregator?"An aggregator is a tool that uses RSS feeds to collect all of your news in one place. Still confused? Watch this great video to learn more. If you would like to set up your own aggregator, I've put together a series of screencasts to teach you how. If grandma can do it, so can you!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just went to a family reunion, where some of the relatives could be benefitted by your suggestions. More importantly, I'm wondering about the idea of starting to have my juniors and seniors participate in a blog for classes. Do you use bloging for your students at school? I'm concerned about security and privacy issues. - TG -

jamie camp said...

Liz--I needed a quick easy way to explain rss aggregators to my family and to show them how to set up Reader. You were the first one I thought of! Your screencasts are very handy and useable! Thanks for sharing your work!! :)