I finally got a turn-out for a class on blogging. 8 people showed up to take a 90-minute Blogging 101 class here at the library, and while I doubt any of them are going to keep at it, they all seemed pretty happy when they left. I organized the class so that I gave a breif (about 20 minutes or so) slide presentation describing blogs and showing examples. The rest of the class involved everyone starting a Blogger acount and writing a post. (Although I prefer WordPress, it seems a tad less intuitive for computer novices.) There were some bumps in the road (two students didn’t have email accounts, and one was more concerned with learning to type than learning to blog) but for the most part, the students were engaged and asked interesting questions.
One of the hardest elements of teaching the class was getting across how flexible the concept of blogging is. I tried to give examples from all across the spectrum — from my friends’ cooking blog to Global Voices — but the blogosphere is so vast it can be hard to comprehend without having much prior knowledge. I’m wondering if a Blogging Boot Camp is in order, where students learn what blogs are and spend a class period reading a bunch, before coming back the next week to start their own.
