Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Why Blog?

You may wonder why Mansfield ISD, a public school district, would choose to blog. The basic idea behind the Your Mansfield ISD blog is that if your home is located within our district boundaries, our schools are your schools. And let's face it - a school district is a large organization with lots of moving parts. It can be intimidating, when you really think about all of the local policy, state and national legislation, etc., that go into our final programs. Our goal with this blog is to simplify many of these complexities and also key you in on many of the great things that are going on.

One other important element, we invite your feedback on this site through the commenting feature. Comments will be moderated. To read our comment policy, click here. If there's something you'd like to see us blog about, send an email to blog@mansfieldisd.org .

Regardless of why you're here, we're glad you stopped by. Check back soon for new posts.


Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Blogging Policy

Blogging policy
Welcome to Your Mansfield ISD. If you’re thinking of joining in the conversation, take a look at our blogging guidelines below.

New to blogging?
A blog is literally a web log – an online record, or log,of someone’s thoughts and opinions updated frequently. The majority of blogs allow visitors to join in by adding their own responses (or comments) to posts by the author (blogger.) Most search engines now offer an option to search blogs, and many individuals choose to get their news and information from blogs.

If you want to respond to a post, click on the link underneath the entry. This will bring up a page where you can submit your comment.

Commenting on Your Mansfield ISD
Your Mansfield ISD is available for all visitors to add their comments to posts. Please keep these comments relevant to the entry in question, and bear in mind that very long comments may put off fellow users!

All posting of comments on this blog are at the discretion of the editors. The intent of this policy is not to keep any negative or critical information from being posted, but to protect the privacy and rights of Mansfield ISD staff and students. To clarify, we will not post comments that reference specific employees or students. It is our policy to review all comments before publishing, partly to reduce the possibility of spam comments and partly to ensure comments are in line with our blog commenting guidelines set out below.

We will update comments as often as we can during our operating hours – 8:00 AM-4:30 PM Monday to Friday (or as deemed necessary during off-hours.)

Blog commenting guidelines
We welcome your comments and look forward to what you have to say. However, we will not publish comments that:
  • Break the law or encourage others to do so. This includes respecting copyright and fair use laws. If you are talking about somebody else’s work, reference this or the person, and where possible include a link.
  • Contain abusive or inappropriate language or statements. This includes remarks that are racist, homophobic and sexist as well as those that contain obscenities or are sexually explicit.
  • Easily identify students and/or staff in defamatory, abusive, or generally negative terms.
  • Do not show proper consideration for others’ privacy or are considered likely to offend or provoke others – i.e. don’t pick fights or goad others into inflammatory debates.
  • Are spam – i.e. repeatedly posting the same comment or comments that are simply advertising/promoting a service or product.
In addition, comments and/or links within your comments should be relevant to the post. Comments containing links to websites falling into the categories above will not be published.

We reserve the right to not post comments or remove any comment at any time, for any reason – but hope in practice that this won’t be necessary. Bottom line: Don't scare people and be smart.

Feedback
We welcome your feedback. If you have a comment or wish to report an inappropriate comment, please email us at blog@misdmail.org.

The disclaimers…
Your Mansfield ISD is authored by Richie Escovedo in his capacity as Director of Media and Communications at Mansfield ISD (MISD) along with designated authors.

The comments are our own and don’t necessarily represent the MISD’s official positions, strategies or opinions. The Mansfield ISD is not responsible for the content on Web sites linked to from this blog.

This post was last updated on September 8, 2010

What is a blog?

The word "blog" is short for “weblog.” Weblogs began in the mid-90s as a way for individuals to keep online diaries, or journals, of their activities. The popular site Xanga listed only 100 blogs in 1997, but boasted more than 20 million blogs in 2005.
Most search engines now offer an option to search blogs, and many individuals choose to get their news and information from blogs. The good news about blogs is that they are generally an unfiltered information source managed wholly by the blog owner. The bad news is that the information on any blog is only as good as that blog's editor.
Blogs have had significant impact on political campaigns, news gathering and have allowed individuals to share information with the world easily and informally.