When so many free blogging services exist, I am not sure why one would pay for Typepad.

We find, first and foremost, that a lot of people like being able to get professional support direct from those of us who make the tools. I think K. describes this well above.

In addition, there are lots of unique features — TypePad lets you use any widgets you want, so if you want to do things like show the weather or let people subscribe by email, it’s just a few clicks. (99% of widgets don’t work with wordpress.com blogs)

And for those who are concerned about showing up in search engines, we deliver your blog posts directly to search engines like Technorati or Google Blog Search or Bloglines, so your posts show up immediately. (Conversely, you can password-protect your blog if you want it to be private.)

I personally think Typepad URL’s are somewhat clunky: username.typepad.com/blogname.

Actually, TypePad’s always supported using your own domain name, if you have one. You can even use yourname.yourschool.edu or something like that, if you prefer.

Movable Type’s difficult installation is one of its biggest drawbacks.

This has gotten significantly easier. Lots of big schools use tools like Movable Type Enterprise to support blogs for tens of thousands of students and faculty, and the basic installation of MT Enterprise is just double-clicking on a Windows installer.

rebuild your pages when you make changes, which as far as I know is still necessary with Movable Type.

MT hasn’t required rebuilds for a few years. So no need to wait for that, either.

As you mentioned, we do have very active communities of educators on LiveJournal, and we also offer resources for educators to help create blogging policies, or to help you make the case to administrators or other decision-makers about why you’d need to start blogging in the first place.

And of course, all of our tools support having an unlimited number of blogs, with the ability to create custom communities in Vox and LiveJournal. Those custom communities can even be limited-access, so individual posts or even individual images or videos can be accessible by only the people you select. We’re seeing classrooms using Vox communities as private gathering-spots, where only students can see the pictures that are uploaded, and parents can be invited in on a per-post or per-blog basis to get access.

Anyway, hope you don’t mind the digression, but this stuff is extremely exciting for us to watch at Six Apart, and I just hope that enthusiasm is evident!

Excellent post–especially for the newbies out there. I encourage anyone reading this and contemplating blogging to just start!

I chose WordPress for its ease of use features and the great support department is constantly upgrading features all the time. I am still on the lookout for a platform to use with my students and will check out the 21classes suggested–thanks reflective.

Reflective, I agree (obviously).

Rebecca, I am not sure if Now Reading is available as a widget. I don’t use widgets yet (I might some day, but for right now, all the template tweaking involved makes my head hurt). It’s a WordPress plugin called Now Reading, and you can learn more about it here: Roblog: Now Reading.

However, something you might want to try is All Consuming. You can get the same basic feature, and I think you can just add it as a widget.

By the way, Dana, I like the “Currently Reading” on your sidebar. On WordPress, I’d probably create a Widget (a feature not currently working well on WordPress).

Recently I’ve been trying out something I saw through Will Richardson’s blog (I believe he had a hand in molding the teacher-student version): 21classes

It’s a great idea, but it’s a little difficult to navigate, and I don’t know if I ‘ll use it if I have to spend much more time trying to figure it out. It’s just not as intuitive as the wordpress system.

Right now I’m working on creating a class website that allows for students to take part, and 21classes seems like the right solution. That said, I think wordpress is the way to go, whether you choose to use edublogs or to use WP.com.

Considering the time I spend in the blogosphere, a small monthly fee that’s less than the cost of a “meal out” is worth the cost, considering I have built and maintained 8 or so blogs.

Downside to typepad:
1. The same photo (from the “about” page) in the sidebar is used for multiple blogs- it’s one photo, or no photo.
2. Only one blog is permitted to have a fold, so most blogs have long bits of text, which make it visually messy, IMHO. I prefer a blurb, with a link to “read more” if the reader is interested.
3. Text that is cut and pasted from a Word document often doesn’t “translate” easily into a post, so I often have to “repost” the text. For example, before and after any countries, cities, or words that begin with capital letters within a sentence, there is a return space.

All in all, however, I’m happy with typepad. I am, however, interested in converting to edublogs, especially since so many teachers are using it! Thanks for the informative post, Dana!