Early in the course in one of our MOO sessions we were discussing Blogging tools, and preferred/selected sites and tools people were using. Somebody came out with the statement “all blog sites/tools are the same”, which was a bit of a convesation stopper.
At the time, I recognised that there was something I didn’t agree with in that statement, but didn’t know exactly what it was at the time and couldn’t articulate it in the time available and everything else that was going on in the group dialogue. From a functional perspective: sure, all blog site tools largely have the same objective – ability to keep something like an online log or diary, and then some.
However, now I’m at the end of the course and having built up a body of experience in the use of Blogging tools (WordPress, Blogger, CSU Interact, ISPG Moodle) and that comment is still bugging me. Because I have to say that they’re not all the same. Whilst they may share largely the same purpose … their usability (ease of use, consistency, ease of learning), capabilities, flexibilities are VERY different.
WordPress has been a joy to use.
Blogger, not so impressed.
ISPG Moodle fairly rudimentary but relative simple and therefore easy to use. The use and appearance of a “Tag cloud” within the Site is very good.
CSU Interact … frankly, I found this one to be bloody hard work. I can’t seem to add the requisite three entries. Just one is appearing. Functionally it seems to attempt/support more capability andmore structure in the content (titles, absract, body, tags, etc) but since I can’t publish some entries that seems of little use. Perhaps there is a limit to the number of entries I can submit and reached that limit … but if so surely it would notify me in some way.
So in conclusion, not all Blogging tools are the same. The user of the blog site needs to be comfortable with how to use it, and importantly … enJOY using it if the blog site is to alive and active with regular updates. Anything which gets in the way will discourage use. For commercial businesses those considerations on blogs are probably pushed aside as employee’s as remunarated to forego those expectations and simply use the blog tool provided but I would contend that there are side effects to productivity and quality.
