Talk:Creating a blog/Anatomy of a blog
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Contents
| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| Categorisation and tagging, blogging netiquette, and avoiding pitfalls | 1 | 12:29, 21 February 2013 |
| Link to thought-provoking blog posts about blogging? | 1 | 08:18, 20 February 2013 |
HI Wayne, Below some feedback re the blog support resource.
It’s great – only thing I would be interested to see in it is a little more info on the importance of categorisation or tagging. Noting that categories are the broad themes covered in your blog, and that by applying these to posts creates navigation elements to help users filter and find info pertaining to their interests. This could be incorporated into the Anatomy of a blog section (both the graphic, and related text) and perhaps one of the dot points in the activity could be to consider if the blog you are looking at uses categorisation or tagging and how that impacts navigation.
Another way might be to have an ‘if you’re interested’ type of extension activity (like where you give links to info on wordpress vs blogger features) linking through to a couple of mature blogs that use categorisation and/or tagging well and noting how it becomes more important over time to help navigate the mass of information available. I guess categorisation and tagging may be less of an issue if the blog is only to be used for a couple of months.
Apart from that, it might be good to note some of the pitfalls or no-nos re netiquette for online communications. No cyber-bullying, posting photos that are not yours to publish, citing other people’s works properly if you embed material, sensitivity in commenting, not defaming people ie reminding them it is a public media channel where the content persists on the web (courtesy of search engine’s archiving efforts) possibly even after you remove offending content.
My colleague Dr Ted Mitew, here in Arts, has written a blog that outlines some of these issues very well. http://blogs.uow.edu.au/becomingdigital/
Maybe you could point to it?
Regards, Sarah
Sarah Lambert
B.A. Comm, MBA, MAIPM (Australian Institute of Project Management)
Manager
Blogging@UoW
http://blogs.uow.edu.au
Thanks for that - -really appreciate the feedback and helping us improve quality.
Good suggestion -- will include and improve references to categories / labels.
I like the idea of an extension activity. The challenge with this tutorial is that some learners may set up a course specific blog (rather than their own permanent blog.) and we're trying to develop a resource which is sufficiently generic for both use cases. Also there are differences in how we would harvest the rss feeds - -for example, in a MOOC-like scenario we don't want to harvest personal blog posts which have nothing to do with the course. It can get complicated because WP supports tags but not blogger.
Good suggestion re pitfalls and netiquette- -I think the resource should be expanded to include an additional sub-page on Tips for blogging or something similar. Have now created new subpage for tips on blogging.
Ted's blog is a great resource and we can certainly link to it.
Perhaps you'd like to join me in building the Tips on blogging page ;-)
Wayne, this looks like an excellent resource.
One suggestion: In addition to the headings you've got, I think it would be good to have one called "additional resources" where we could add links to thought-provoking blog posts or articles on blogging. One that comes to mind is Stephen Downes' post "Fads and Fanboys: The Top 10 Tricks Bloggers Use to Drive Traffic" (http://www.downes.ca/post/54933). It would sort of fit in under the heading "Anatomy of a blog" but it is wider ranging in its scope, going to the heart of why we blog, and challenging us to think deeply about how we present our ideas in our blogs.
Gabi
Hi Gabi
Appreciate your feedback and that's a good suggestion.
I had originally thought about including guidelines on blogging -- but then decided to leave it out for an introductory resource on setting up a blog. This feedback confirms that leaving it out was not a good idea. Thanks for that.
Rather than squeezing it in under the "Anatomy of a blog' section, I think it warrants its own page. Thanks for that!
