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Owau 3/31 WordPress

"WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time."Matt Mulleweg, it's creator intended it to be easy to use and supportive of open sharing. Over 3.7 million downloads of its latest version says it is. "It's just an open source project, it's free for everybody and always will be."

In this way, his mission is the same as ours, of Pauahi; to share, to disseminate the knowledge and pathways we've been given access to. He says in an interview linked below, "Most software doesn't die from people pirating it, or from people using it in ways you didn't intend, it dies from obscurity. So open source is the best way I can imagine to have distribution or adoption among..people of influence in the community.... The thing that I learned over time is the more open I was, the more successful things were...so put as much out there as possible."

Here's the easy first step -
  • go to http://en.wordpress.com/signup/
  • Choose a Domain and blog Title - pick something you care about or want to have fun with - doesn't matter, your choice.
  • Click private if you prefer, and you can invite us as Users, or you can leave it public.
  • Once it opens, click the Dashboard link at the top of the page and explore! (see emailed handout)
Remember, Good blogs arise from passion first, then content so go for it!

You may be interested in a couple of related posts by Burt Lum about building online communities and a presence:
Tips and Myths ... http://bytemarks.pbwiki.com/Top10Tips
Social Networking links http://bytemarks.pbwiki.com/ToolKit

My sample blog is http://joanmats.wordpress.com

Warning - make sure you save your Drafts often and click Upload (in the righthand column) to check your results. When you view your post, you can, as the author, click on the Edit link to return to the Dashboard. When you do this, if you had clicked Preview instead of UPload, it may return you to an earlier version of your post So save or click Upload first, never quite figured out that glitch.


See and hear Matt at http://www.horsepigcow.com/2008/06/05/the-whuffie-factor-matt-mullenweg-talks-wordpress/

Comments

Clinton said…
Mahalo Joan for sharing. Wordpress seems to have more features than this blogger blog. I thought it was really simple to setup, manage and post. I tried to look at your blog Joan, but it was password protected.

The whole blogging concept fits very nicely with online social networking. So, how can we take advantage of social networking in respects to marketing? Maybe one way is to have a blog on our branch Web site where free A'o Makua activities are posted. The free activities would serve to encourage participants to sign up for A'o Makua while getting users to network with one another. Mahalo again for sharing.
Komarey said…
Mahalo for sharing Joan. I've been really curious to see the additional tools WordPress offers. I was surprised how easy it was to set up and modify. It has a user friendly interface. On a personal level, as we continue to find tools that allow us to share through social networking, it's going to be difficult to decide which ones to follow...

I do agree with Clinton in trying to utilize it for A`o Makua participants. It's a great way to perpetuate the learning community once it is created online. Three weeks for rich interaction should continue beyond the course itself with resources and dialogue. It would be nice to implement. As I was facilitating A`o Makua, it seems like there were a handful of students that led many discussions. Those students may be interested in administering blogs too. Just an idea... Thanks again for introducing this great tool!
Kelly D. said…
Mahalo Joan, I enjoyed trying out this tool. I echo both Clinton and Komarey's comments. This is an easy tool to use and implement so finding possible fits to enhance our participants DL experiences and to spread the word is what we should consider. I was thinking that even a general KS DL blog site similar to what Clinton described might be a good start. We have a lot to share and creating a blog using a tool like Wordpress would allow us to create a quick way to push our information out to a specific audience and we wouldn't need to wait for the next newsletter distribution. I know a concern would be the resources needed to do this because we would want to keep it "fresh". I like how KPublishing is trying to build community by featuring a blog for each counselor. I think it adds a person touch and encourages rapport without having to be
f-2-f. Just some thoughts . . .
Kelly
Joan said…
Thanks clinton, komarey and kelly. The thought of a blog page for participants is super! good way to market but also good way for them to stay in contact with us. We can put an RSS button so they periodically get a buzz from us. If it's a lot of comments could even have a page per course or thread.

And Clinton - thanks for telling me it was passworded! I was mucking around and wondered what that was so I locked it. Lost my one and only fan too!

I was feeling pretty good I didn't have any spam - guess I was talking to myself. I kind of liked it that way though! ha ha!

If you want to try again, it should be open. 8-)
Dorothy said…
Mahalo for sharing Word Press with us Joan. Although I didn't have as much time as I'd like to play around with the tools, I found it fairly easy to set up. I like the blogging feature and was also able to hook up my delicious and twitter accounts, although my twitter account wasn't working properly when I viewed it.

Similar to everyone else's thoughts, I think we should definitely discuss as a group how we'd like to proceed with integration of Web 2.0 tools for our DL learners to sustain and enhance our virtual community.

Going off of what Kelly D. said, I also liked how KScholars counselors maintained their blogs. Maybe we could have our A'o Makua DL Instructors keep a blog during the time period they're facilitating their courses and the rest of the staff contribute with specials, tidbits, etc.? Just a thought. Looking forward to our owau discussion.
Anonymous said…
Thanks Joan, good one! I enjoyed your site, very creative & helpful. Like Komarey I'm interested to know more about the additional tools they offer & how they integrate into the web pages themselves. Also, like Clinton stated, it would be nice to incorporate on our current web site. I was actually thinking (as I was viewing KS Scholar's new web site) that a well set up blog addition, along with some of the web 2.O advertising tools we've been researching might replace our need for the newsletter, if we do it right. I'm thinking 2 birds, one stone again. :) If the newsletter is going online, it might be better to push people directly to our updated, modern, and "with it" web site, instead of managing 2 entities that serve a similar function. :D food for thought.
Christy said…
I'm with KC. I spent yesterday looking at the Newsletter tools. I liked Mail Chimp for its usability but I could see us trying to tie these pieces together. It seems as if we're posting regularly now (PD opportunities and bi-monthly Owau). We could easily rotate postings of other interesting articles/ads in a "push" approach. The only thing is that the marketing tools (like Mail Chimp) have an extensive reporting system. I didn't look into the tracking of a WordPress site but it would probably be a different focus than marketing.

Overall, I was excited to try WordPress after Joan brought it up. I'm glad I had the opportunity to create a site:
http://alysabug.wordpress.com/ and see how it all worked. Like everyone else I found it very user-friendly and something that could be easily used.

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