Posterous: A Simple, Effective, On-The-Go Blogging Platform

Tech: As I drove to the airport on my departure for the US, I uploaded two apps to my iphone that served their purpose during my travels in South America.  These two beautiful apps go by the names of Posterous and Photo Shop Express.  This link is to an example posterous site I created, BoliviaExample.posterous.com.  It gives an example of how I combined them when I was in Bolivia.

Posterous is a useful site on its own.  I took advantage of the on-the-go feature to make all of my posts entirely from my iphone.  This feature requires wifi access to publish, which created some fun wifi quests for me in the locations I found myself.  I typed and saved drafts of my posts on buses, taxis, hotels, airports, a dessert, mountains, and various cities.  Then, I published them when I located a precious wifi connection.

Although I opted to post from my iphone, it is also easy to post from a computer.  The autopost option allows users to post to many different platforms, including Blogger, Vimeo, and You Tube.  Settings can be made private or public.  A site can be configured for individuals or for group contributions.  Pictures, videos, audio files, and documents can all be posted.  Here's a link to FAQs about Posterous.

The P.S. Express app helped spruce up the pictures I snapped on my iphone.  I only used the edit feature, but this app has more to offer as well.

Met Ed (Applications):  The simplicity of Posterous has a lot to offer education as does the option to use it with a smart phone,  ipad, etc.  I am looking for ways of making smart phones my friend and not my enemy in my adult ESOL classes. (See Kacey’s post on their future projected growth.)  Here are a few of many possible uses in the hands of the students:

• Science:  Documenting the steps in an experiment.
• ESOL:  Taking and describing pictures of new vocabulary words.
• Writing: Using a series of pictures to write a story or as an alternative to a book report.
• Collaboration with other classes:  Teachers and students pose questions and classes in other locations respond.

Happy blogging!