Friday, June 06, 2008

Going on vacation? Start a blog!

I came up with this idea a couple of years ago. My wife and I were going to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon and we wanted to share photos, videos, and our observations with family and friends back home. It was very well received so I've kept it going. I have to admit, it's been fun for me to go back and re-read some of my posts and watch the videos.

If you've never had a blog before, why not get started with something fun for you and your friends, and maybe even your students too! I'm a big fan of Blogger because it's free and it's very easy to use. Who knows, you may even get enough experience that you'll start your own classroom blog next fall.

For video you can use your digital camera's video mode to take 30 seconds or 1 minute of video that will transfer via USB to your computer and upload to Google video or YouTube and look just fine on your blog.

You can enable comments so that visitors to your blog can keep in contact with you, or ask you questions.

I put weather underground "widgets" on my blog so that I can always keep tabs on the weather forecast. You can even find videos from your destination already on YouTube that you can easily "embed." It's also easy to embed Google Maps.

I don't have any plans for a "big" vacation this summer, but if you'd like to see my posts from previous trips to San Francisco and Vegas/Grand Canyon (along with some recent video of our puppy "Big Papi") go to http://dornbergvacation.blogspot.com

No comments: