“Hi Chris, my name is Stephen Strauss and I have proposed to teach a course on blogs and blogging at the Canadian equivalent of a junior college. In doing research for this I came across your applied blogging workshop and used it as one of a number of examples of how one might teach said course. Does your workshop lump together people who know little about blogs with those who were somewhat ineffectively doing it or do you divide things into blogging 101, blogging 201 framework.” Read my response below… Via The Applied Blogging Workshop
Stephen, I love emails like this! And I will help you in any way I can. Short answer: yes and yes.
First yes, the folks who attend are all over the board and have included PR folks, activists, students, writers, journalists, and poets. Some have their own blog and want to learn how to market, how to get traction. Others are complete perplexed and would like me to go over it from “I read that article on Blogging in the New York Times Magazine.”
Second yes, it is sort of build into the format of Blogging 101 (Starting a Blog), Blogging 202 (A Blog of Your Own), and Blogging 701 (Blogs, Blogging and the Blogosphere)
Much longer answer: First off, I only have a couple hours per single-session class. I don’t have a series of classes — it is not a course, just a one-day-workshop. Here’s how it seems to break down:
Starting a Blog is for beginners. I absolutely don’t want to teach technology! So I try to create primers that people can read when they’re not in my class. “How To” pages. So, while I want them to start a blog, I also want to give them a little “religion” and a little perspective and a little strategy and a little marketing and some tactics as well. Sadly, so many people really just want the hand holding of a step-by-step “this is how you create a blog on blogger” and I really don’t want to do that.
I do need to spend more time on the taxonomy of the blog, though.
“This is how a blog traditionally looks and why.”
But then again, there isn’t enough time for everything and I wish I had multiple classes and I wish I even had a computer lab.
The next one is called A Blog of Your Own and is to follow along after the Starting a Blog workshop — and it really does because it ends up being populated by the same students who attended Starting a Blog and just didn’t have enough time. And who took the couple weeks between classes to fiddle and putz around and come back with loads of questions and a real interest after they truly have their respective “a ha” moment and finally “get it.”
So, I have yet to really put together a lesson plan for the class, A Blog of Your Own. Which I should do, anyway. I mean, if for no other reason than to be able to post it onto Applied Blogging.
The Applied Blogging Workshop exists because I only have two-and-a-half hours to teach eight hours worth of stuff, so I use ABW as a short of “library” shorthand so that I can breeze over a two hour training concept such as “How to Set Up a Blogger Blog” and tell them at the beginning of the class where they can go to learn more — our classes blog — so that we can spend the finite time that we have getting into meatier things (as in more interesting to me). Actually, I think I am going to send an email “blast” to my students suggesting that they take a look at the ABW site as a reading assignment before they come to class. Great idea. I will assign myself as required reading!
I am going to be doing my first Blogs, Blogging and the Blogosphere course next Tuesday and it is “All Levels” whatever that means. So, I will need to figure out what that means and how to address it. What I like about the copy and description of the course is that it is obviously more theory, strategy, and tactics — almost a Theory of Blogging or Philosophy of Blogging course, which I am seriously excited about. I love Practical Theory, thus, Applied Blogging which makes me think of Applied Science.
So, I don’t know if I could expand all of this content into an entire semester of coursework, but I am sure that I would love to have four or so three-hour sessions. I probably could fill eight two-hour sessions.
Baby steps, though.
I hope I answered your questions. Feel free to steal everything on Applied Blogging as long as you give either me or ABW a nod. Cool?
Cheers,
