Setting up a Blog for School, Using a Blog for Adult Education, and a few Thoughts on Blogging

Oct 9

As we look to round out week 2 of PIDP 3100, roughly 20 adult learners have ventured into the technical challenge of creating a blog. I’m lucky; I already had a pretty good idea what is needed because I have a blog for my photography website. But that means I know how much work it is. It is also why, frankly, I am aware that my photography blog is lacking. Blogging is a lot of work, and it can be hard to keep up with it.

~ Blog Setup ~

As another form of social media, blogging takes commitment to do well - so much so that it is a full time job for some people. Combining what I know from my business administration background as well as my experience setting up a website, there are a few proven concepts I consciously brought to my blog this time around:

Accessible Formatting

I keep the background unobtrusive and the formatting simple and easy to read. Because I want my photographs to stand out, my website uses a simple black font on grey background. I have a carefully curated aesthetic as part of my branding, which includes some flourishing touches on the header and footer. Sooo….because it is set up on my website platform, I guess that means my student blog gets those artistic touches as well.

Consistency

By having a consistent layout, a maximum of 2 easy to read fonts, and coordinated imagery, I maintain a professional presentation. My website is set up in Squarespace. It’s not always an easy-to-use program, and I have had frustrations. I have frequently thought I set something up to look how I wanted it, but it displayed very differently on various electronic platforms. That is a lesson I am still learning. Additionally, when it comes to blogging, posting consistency is very important. Regular posts help keep your content delivery predictable, and that helps to build and maintain your follower base.

Be Interesting

It is important to provide content that is worth reading, and it needs to be visually stimulating. Be friendly. Pay attention to the details, and use spellcheck. Let’s see if I succeeded in keeping it interesting here. (insert nervous laughter…anybody?…)

~ Blogs for Adult Education ~

I also did a little bit of research into why we would use a blog as an adult learning tool. It turns out there are quite a few practical reasons to use blogs in a classroom setting. Huh. Look at my teacher knowing things. Here are a few uses:

Instructor uses

This includes communicating in a more friendly forum, creating a sharing space, community building, and creating a public space.

Student uses

There were a variety of uses I could have discussed here. To touch on a few, blogs are useful for responding to readings, maintaining a writer’s notebook or journal, posting reflective or open entries, and student sharing. This excerpt video from Kendra Oliver and Richard Coble’s article on Teaching with Blogs gave me some good food for thought:

Gayle Morris, from the University of Michigan’s Sweetland Centre for Writing, also provided a good overview in her article Using Blogs in the Classroom that I found interesting.

~ Some final thoughts on creating student blogs ~

I found the two links (provided above) great academic sources for why to to blog. I am still learning about some of the technical points, like the use of the creative commons license or copyright statements. These are subjects I had not previously found when I just searched how to set up a blog on Pinterest. Honestly though, I would still recommend it. A resource like Pinterest is a social media site, so why not get some familiarity with it to set up your own social media? I found it super useful for some of the less academic pointers.

Anyway, that is where my head is at as we go into this blogging exercise. In the interests of posting consistency, I am looking to post once a week throughout this course. We shall see if I succeed (hint, scheduled posts are a wonderful thing). So, nice to chat, and I will post again soon!

~ Jennifer