Overview:

Google Blogger is a free, web log publishing tool for sharing text, photos and video.  It allows you to design your own blog easily with templates or even create your own layout using CSS and HTML.  Blogger gives you the opportunity to share with others, while giving you the support of Google to reach a wider audience.  To start creating a blog, visit the Blogger homepage.  There are easy steps to follow in order to create a username and password, create a display name, and get started.  Choose your own personalized web address (URL) and a blog title.  Next, choose from a variety of attractive and creative templates to add your own information to your personal profile or you can even customize how your blog looks.  

Video:

Here is a video from Google support explaining how to publish a blog post.  Google Blogs is also easily accessible on most mobile devices which provides ease of accessibility so you can Blog from multiple locations.

Uses: 

• Communication

• By creating a class blog, teachers can post class updates, assignments, and activities.  

• Students can ask questions to the teacher and other students in class.  

• Teachers can communicate information to the parents  

• Collaboration

• Students can collaborate on projects with each other through blog posts.

• Teachers can chime in on the student collaboration to help guide the students.

• Writing skills

• Daily student blog reflections about what they learned in class.

• Discussion between the students about class topics.  

• Exploration

• Students can post videos, articles, and pictures on different topics they have researched to help other learn and explore new material with them.  

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Free 

• A google program

• Easy to use

• Template Designer, which allows users to edit and change the template without using coding

• Large community of writers

• Blog is automatically backed up

• Existing domain can be mapped to your blogger account free

• Blog can be monetized with ads

• No Storage limit 

Cons:

• Cannot customize the blog post link structure

• No FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access 

• Cannot upgrade blog

Alternatives:

Ghost - A free and open source blogging platform designed to simplify the process of online publishing for individual bloggers and online publications.

Postach.io - A blogging platform that can turn an Evernote notebook into a content management system. 

Posthaven - A $5 per month blogging platform that aims to create sites that will last forever.  It has a straightforward design and layout, is self-sustaining, and has a pro-user business model.

Svbtle - A writing and reading network for basic blogging that is designed to have minimal distractions.

Tumblr - A microblogging platform which allows users to post multimedia and other content. 

Weebly - An online website with a quick and easy interface. Users only need to worry about the material they post and Weebly will create the rest with a wide variety of layouts and easy to use tools. 

Wordpress -  An online, open source website creation tool and one of the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management systems.

Resources: 

Blogger. (n.d.). Blogger Features. Retrieved July 3, 2015, from https://www.blogger.com/features

Deloatch, P. (2015, May 26). The Best Ways to Use Google In the Classroom. Retrieved July 3, 2015, from

          http://www.edudemic.com/best-ways-to-use-google/

Google (n.d.). Blogger Help Center. Retrieved July 7, 2015, from 

https://support.google.com/blogger/?hl=en#topic=3339243

Mohan, M. (2015, February 9). Blogger vs. WordPress: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons. Retrieved July 3, 2015, from

http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

WestEd for Google (n.d.). Blogger in the Classroom. Retrieved July 7, 2015, from 

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/educators/activities/pdfs_GTA/CribSheet.Blogger3.pdf