Creativity with textual blogs

A Textual Blog
is an online collaborative space where one can promptly post views, interact
with others online, and send news, messages, articles, including receiving of
comments and feed back using text. A person who Blogs called a "Blogger". Articles
on such Blogs are called "posts".

Textual Blogs fall among the
family of social net working tools. They are simple, efficient for interactivity
and easy spread of information out to other people at a very appropriate speed.
This is though on condition that one has access to the Internet. Posts made are
not restricted to length, though it is advisable to keep them short as longer
posts tend to bore the reader. Members to the Textual Blog and the readers are
able to comment or give their views at a time of convenience to them. To reduce
monopoly of text, some bloggers opt to enhance their Textual Blogs with
pictures, video and voice.

Creativity is a necessary
ingredient if one is to draw traffic to a Blog. As a result, textual Blogs have
grown from just online diaries to information sharing platforms.

Some textual Blogs are posted for learning, purposes.
Articles are posted with the aim of teaching, discussing and learning different
items to a specific audience. An example is the YOHAAAP Blog, which is a project
of BROSDI that deals with youth and HIV /AIDS.(www.yohaapwordpress.com)

Another use of Blogs is that some of them are
informative and provide specific information to the grassroots community. An
example of such a Blog is the CELAC Blog, www.celacwordpress.com. It provides
agriculture information from grassroots farmers.

Also experiences are share on Blog platforms which
gives the readers a chance to learn from others and try to practice how others
manage to solve related problems.

News has also moved from the television and radio
alone to Blogs.In this case news are posted in form of text and the readers are
given chance to give comments and compliments. These are posted by different
individuals or groups on textual Blogs e.g. journalist Blogs. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/, http://www.news.com/8300-10784_3-7.html.This
gives news on new technology, trends etc.

The number of users who have visited the Blog is
usually referred to as hits. (Website / Blog hits).Its important that these are
trucked in order to know the audience and adjust the content posted
appropriately.

The ability for the Blog visitors to leave comments
in an interactive format is a vital part of the CELAC Blog.

The CELAC project collects articles from grass root
farmers during knowledge sharing forums, field visits and trainings which are
packaged to suit the end users and published on www.celacwordpress.com. Some
are sent by farmers themselves who usually write them on a piece of paper and
send either by bus, post or through any one who may be traveling towards
someone to the CELAC staff who in turn types them out and post on the Blog
where others can access them.

Posting is done by the farmers themselves, and for
those farmers who can't access internet, the articles are printed out and given
to the sender and all other farmers of the network once a month or during the
knowledge sharing forums.

Once the VKB get this information, they file it and
are accessible to any interested parties and also are readout to members during
the monthly forums and village meetings. That way many of them are able to
access the content and after the forums the members try them out depending on
their needs and practability.