Starting to firm up the purpose of my tech blog for my school. I emailed my principal (in Florence) and he thought it was a good idea. “Continue on” was his comment. I’m finding the technical aspects of WORD PRESS challenging. To set up a blog is much different than writing a post for our class. So many things to consider. The aesthetics, or how it looks visually. Content is another aspect to consider, but I’m not quite there it. So much research to do, for every little bit.
Apart from the visual format of the blog, I need to consider content. I don’t want to scare the teachers or writing such huge “editorial” type of posts, that it becomes uninteresting. Need a way to gently get our staff to buy into this idea. I just finished the “About” part, with a graphic and included a brief explanation or purpose of the blog which is to connect the staff with technology. i might look into doing a padlet about technology and create pages from there and also offer help by letting the staff what I am able to do to help them. Thinking also of including some resources that we already have. Perhaps using shelfari might be visually stimulating for the participants of the blog. I can see why Jenny only expects it to be a work in progress. Something like a tech blog continues until there is no one to participate.
How can I get contributors to the blog? I’m going to get the principal to write something and to perhaps contact our tech committee and the staff members that have given tech workshops to include their views or tips.
i wonder if blogs take on a life of their own, or is it always in the hands of the creator or manager of the blog? I need to see some samples of other blogs.
Blogging is a specific form, and it is being used for many different purposes. Generally, a blog is the work of a creator, and then there are opportunities for contributors to add their comments. I have used a blog to teach this course. It has basically served as a hub for our activity, but we haven’t actually put much into the blog. I learned this from other blog teaching experiences I have had. Blogs are actually difficult to navigate if they get too much content in them. They are great for tracking change over time, such as the blog posts you have been writing for this course. It really depends on the kind of social interaction you want to foster.