Blog Class #5

This was our last class. I can’t call it a great success, but it was fun. I think I have nurtured six blogs, out of the nine students, but have links to only three. I’m hoping three more will show up eventually.

I was surprised to find at least two of my students were doing this on public computers. One of them is very successful. After finding out she had a degree in Computer Science I wasn’t too surprised. The other student is struggling, but seems determined. I hope she will succeed. I promised to help all of them by email, and hope they’ll take me up on it.

We spent about half of the class talking about building traffic to their blogs. Earlier in the week I sent an email with links to sites with traffic building information:

Christine.net
Blog Herald
Daily Blog Tips
Online Marketing Blog

I am sure there are many more–possibly even better than these. I didn’t do an exhaustive search. Youtube has lots of good information, also.

For the remainder of the class time I worked with each student to try to make sure their blogs were off to a good start. I suspect this could have been profitably extended to another five sessions. If the class is offered again, I will recommend a ten week course.

Blog class #4

Topic for this class was ‘building an audience.’ I explained the importance of getting other people to link to you, beginning with finding people with the same interests as yours, commenting on their blogs, getting them to visit your blog. As part of this I reviewed the process of creating links and commenting on other blogs. Also explained the use of categories and tags, all of which are used to help other people with similar interests to find you. I showed some blogs that might be of interest, in particular Ronni Bennett’s  Time Goes By, one of the most interesting blogs expressing the point of view of older people, and with her lists of elder blogs, one of the best networking sites.

I’m doing a lot of repeating and tidying up, and will probably do the same during the next class, our last. I’m trying to find that magical place between the basics of creating a blog and the sophisticated knowledge needed to develop a large audience. My students (and maybe I, myself) are not ready for that, but I’d like them to be on their way. I’d also like to make them comfortable enough with the computer to find the path for themselves. Not easy.

Two of the blogs we created in the class are list in the sidebar, here. I’m trying to get the others to send me their URL’s.

Blog class #3

Only four people showed up for the third class. We spent a lot of time on copyright. Previously I sent them several examples of copyright statements along with a link to the creative commons site. I spent some time explaining each of the options. Of course, my student who originally jumped the gun on copyright, wasn’t there for the discussion. I could hope someone else will fill her in.

My four students all opted for a simple copyright statement, Copyright 2009, YOURNAME, which we put into a widget, getting two lessons in one. After that instruction I went to links, the obvious answer for not violating someone else’s copyright. Having only the four people allowed me to work with each of them individually, which I found useful. A couple of the people put in a list of links that never seemed to show up in the blog. I fixed one of these by moving the blog to a different theme. I don’t know what happened with the other blog, but she seems to have fixed it herself. I don’t know how my students find problems I’ve never seen before.

I will still be in New York on Saturday so we won’t meet again until April 18. Probably wishful thinking on my part, but I’m hoping they will all be far enough along to think about methods for developing revenue sources and ways of increasing audience. I think I am not the person to teach this stuff: I have only a small audience and nothing commercial on my blogs, so it’s probably just as well no one is really ready to learn it. All of this info is available on the web. What I’d really like is to get them all sufficiently computer literate to find it themselves.