support guide for external blogging students

Hi Fellow Blogger

We would like to make sure are fully informed about blogging practices and recognise all the benefits and issues.

Here is a quick overview of the kind of issues you need to be aware of. We are doing this so that you are aware of all the possible issues that could be raised with building content out in the wider world. We don’t want to take away your creativity or enjoyment of these types of spaces.

Appropriateness of Content.

What kind of content should be included in a public blog space? Photographs and private information? Consider what you are revealing to the wider world before committing to posting a post or comment.

Flaming

Use settings on blogs that try to mitigate against malicious commenting about particular individuals, students and staff on sites. Such as moderating comments before they are posted on your site and building a positive supportive community of bloggers.

Ownership

Some sites have different policies of ownership, meaning that by placing your work on a particular site you are handing out some of your ownership rights to that content. E.g. Tumblr do not claim any rights over your work, while Posterous claims some rights while that content is on their site, once you remove the content they lose this ownership.

Longevity of Content. Even though you can remove content, copies of any of the content may have been made by other individuals

Backing Up Content

Where content is meant for a summative assignment, have to understand that you will need to take responsibility for backing up content in case the site losses or is down during the marking period

Watermarking Images

Images of your  work could be downloaded from sites and used without consent. This is very difficult to prevent but by using small image files and watermarking images the chance of this happening can be reduced. http://picmarkr.com/ can help you do this.

Using other peoples content without permission

If you have taken the time to write an interesting post, upload something and shared it, you would probably be annoyed to see this on someone else site where it is claimed to be theirs. Always use links or embed videos or images rather than copy without showing where you got that content.