Thursday, June 05, 2008

blogging 101 workshop

today, with help from two recently graduated seniors, i conducted a blogging 101 workshop for USF staff, librarians, and faculty. the workshop took place at the center for instruction and technology and was part of CIT's june tech-intensive workshop series.

we began at 10 am and i immediately made three promises:

1. you will walk out of here with a blog.

2. you will have a better understanding of how to use a blog and how to sustain a blog.

3. you will have lunch.

we then followed, sorta, this eleven step process.

1. introductions: who are we?

2. discussion: what do you want from a blog? what are your goals?

3. start a blog! (we used blogger)

a. sign up
b. name your blog
c. choose a template
d. done

4. write and publish one blog post.



5. then, lunch! offline! away from computers!

6. settings (with special attention paid to comments setting)

7. everyone comment on two or three other blogs ("blogging is 51% writing blog posts," i declared, offering zero evidence for my statistics, "and 49% commenting on other people's blog posts.")

8. tags and tagging

9. importing images to your blog

10. basic page elements (with a show-and-tell example of creating a blog roll)

11. strategies for sustainability (aeiou)

lis and sara, the two recently graduated USF seniors (and davies scholars) who helped me teach the workshop, were excellent. anytime a workshop participant had a question or showed some techno-frustration, lis or sara would be there with a tip or a suggestion. my thing is students teaching students but students teaching professors is pretty cool too.

something to remember - good learning environments require good food! having lunch was not only a delicious way to divide the three-hour workshop, it was also a welcomed opportunity to log off, walk away from our computers, and interact directly with our food and colleagues.

to keep a blog, you need to feed the blog. i hope the following get fed:

Stan Buller's The End of Government??
Ellen Kelly Daley's Expecting Seamus J
Life Transitions
Tom Lucas' A Jesuit's Garden by the Golden Gate
marcella's Global Sense: Youth Network Resource
My Dog is Better Than Your Dog!!!
Greg Pabst's fishlanguage
Renate's ResearchIdeaForum

5 comments:

....J.Michael Robertson said...

Pabst and Lucas are up and running. I thought at least one of them would title his blog "A Find Madness."

Bryan Alexander said...

Heh - I like your post-to-comment ratio. Will have to use that.

Anonymous said...

michael - "a find madness" would be a fine title for a blog, even for pabst or lucas.

bryan - thanks. and you are free to quote and distribute my stats. =)

Sara said...

A. I think it is obvious which side of the room the Sun God favors

B. I forgot to tell you yesterday that the "sign up" step needs to be amended to those who have already created a gmail account. Some gmail users got a bit tripped up since they already had a blogger account (as all gmail users do).

Kelly said...

nice and nicer. It's all about sharing the love!