I became interested in doing the weblog option of this assignment for several reasons. In the summer of 2006, I took a Language and Literacy Education (LLED) class at the University of British Columbia (UBC) called 449 Teaching Adolescents Literature, as part of the Diploma in Librarianship (http://www.lled.educ.ubc.ca/courses/summer2007/449-951.htm). Our teacher Peter Hill had developed a weblog component to his subject English class at University Hill Secondary, and I was very interested in how it worked. He told us that students who do not always take part in class discussions sometimes engage in online academic chat, which intrigued me. The idea of creating my own blog has also been fueled by my daughter Rachel’s blog (http://rachellynnseoul.blogspot.com/). She lives in Seoul Korea, and teaches elementary school-aged students English language. While her blog is personal, she often posts pictures of her students and stories about them. My wife and I journeyed to Seoul this past Spring Break and had a wonderful time visiting and experiencing the city and the food, and Rachel showed me the evolution of her blog. I hope to help the librarian at Tupper Secondary, where I work, develop a blog in some kind of capacity. I am not sure where it all will lead just yet, but with a little experience I am getting more comfortable with the technology and I have found blogging to be good fun. Although the learning is often frustrating, the successes are quite rewarding.
I started with Blogger because it is convenient for people using Google, who have fairly recently bought the company (http://www.google.ca/). I have Google set as my home page, and customized it with a button that sends web sites and pages straight to Blogger, so easy! Up until the buy out of Blogger (old Blogger) by Google (new Blogger) this was not possible. Rachel has had many difficulties with Blogger as they changed over to Google, and she has learned a different way of posting, that is by using code. She experimented by finding view source on the page pull down menu on her browser, and copied the code into her blog until she got the format she wanted. I have not had to do this because I started on the new Blogger. I am now practicing uploading pictures from my travels; I just have to click the picture icon button on the posting menu in Blogger to post pictures. The hard part was getting the icon to appear, which I found after reading posted messages from other Blogger users in the help feature of Blogger. I also posted some links to http://www.flickr.com/ to see pictures that I put there, just to try it out.
The ongoing evolution of the blog is interesting, as the importance of design and function become evident to me. The process of determining how to combine these two elements is important but takes a great deal of time, going back and forth between the blog’s template and the published page to see how it looks. Next, I practice using the blog as if I am not the creator, trying to step away and regarding it as a casual net surfer, an unimpassioned viewer. This seems to be the logical way to go, but it is hard for me to be too critical of my own work, and I often seek the thoughts of others. For example, I wanted to show off my blog one day to my wife and daughter. On first view they both let out a groan because the lime green title was not a good pick for contrast with the background red and therefore tough to read. Being stuck in the idea that it was pretty, I was not thinking about the functionality of it. I changed the line to black for easier viewing, having realized the error of my ways.
I recently added two links to http://www.youtube.com/ showing curling and ultimate Frisbee videos, a search link to Canadian food news, and a feed to http://www.newyorkislanders.com/rss/topStories.asp, a hockey news update. These links will be constantly updated by the original sites, keeping the blog current and adding interest for viewers.
I picked the layout and colour after reviewing several blogs during this course. I found that the most successful ‘serious' intellectual and academically focused ones had a cool look to them, which tended to accentuate the writing, not the design. Blogs for young children had a lot of different colours, moving parts, and generally very interesting visually. I hoped to build something in between. I favoured sites that have a large amount of content on the front page versus ones that had “Enter” signs which you still have to go through before you know much about it, or ones with only links to other sites because it makes the viewer work too hard to get anywhere. There are so many resources on the internet that viewers must scan quickly or get bogged down, which means for me that a web page must be user-friendly immediately or go by the wayside. That is why I added the raison d’blog at the top of the page. Hopefully people will know quickly if they want to continue reading further, and will not be wasting their time.
The El Jefe picture in the right side bar should also give an indication of the blog’s content, as will the sidebar (Canadian Food News) below it. I wanted a solid colour that would provide contrast to the text for easy reading, and since I love earth tones the deep brownish red fit well. It is almost the perfect match for El Jefe’s facial hair, not dissimilar from my own.
A note on El Jefe: It means The Chef in Spanish. My wife and I were in Mexico during winter break, and so Spanish is on my mind, plus Espagnole is one of the mother sauces of French cookery. These little items are amusing to me, so they are included in my blog, which is a reflection of me. El Jefe was copied from Clip Art online, which is allowed for educational purposes according to the information at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx.
The challenges for this project are mostly to do with learning the software and being willing and able to spend the hours necessary to create something of quality. The blog development is perpetual. Since starting the assignment, I have learned much on the technical side. On the design side I also learned a great deal, most importantly, to identify what I liked and why, but it is always the content that makes a good blog good. The content must be what the author wants, since even professional blogs are very personal, and must be something others will want to view. A blog can be simply a journal or diary, but to be interesting to others in your discipline, it must benefit them as well.
When I began this project I thought I had a clear idea of what I wanted and I knew it would take time to develop the blog. I changed my mind several times about the design, but the basics stayed the same. I have changed the content a lot so far, and expect that will continue. The choices a blogger makes as to what goes on the page should be reviewed often. I have enjoyed building it and may keep the blog current after the course is over. The assignment asked for ten entries, which I made the very first night I started, and were all about food and literacy. Since then I have done quite a bit more, including some casual random muses and other things of interest to me. I hope they will generate some discussion at school, but they certainly are fun for me.
In the future the best advice I can offer new bloggers is to try to have fun with it, and do not be afraid to experiment. It is a little disconcerting putting your personal or professional life out for public view, and I know there are many of us in the class who are wary. There are ways to limit access to the blog which I am still learning. To allow students to post to your blog and interact with each other is a whole other issue and bunch of knowledge which I am continuing to explore. In my current job teaching cooking, I am not sure how to build blogging into the curriculum. I may just encourage them to read it and respond in some way to any of the links, articles, images or personal thoughts of mine, and hope to establish a deeper rapport or conversation electronically than we generally have in class. Time will tell how the next stage of Scootermcbaird takes shape.
I started with Blogger because it is convenient for people using Google, who have fairly recently bought the company (http://www.google.ca/). I have Google set as my home page, and customized it with a button that sends web sites and pages straight to Blogger, so easy! Up until the buy out of Blogger (old Blogger) by Google (new Blogger) this was not possible. Rachel has had many difficulties with Blogger as they changed over to Google, and she has learned a different way of posting, that is by using code. She experimented by finding view source on the page pull down menu on her browser, and copied the code into her blog until she got the format she wanted. I have not had to do this because I started on the new Blogger. I am now practicing uploading pictures from my travels; I just have to click the picture icon button on the posting menu in Blogger to post pictures. The hard part was getting the icon to appear, which I found after reading posted messages from other Blogger users in the help feature of Blogger. I also posted some links to http://www.flickr.com/ to see pictures that I put there, just to try it out.
The ongoing evolution of the blog is interesting, as the importance of design and function become evident to me. The process of determining how to combine these two elements is important but takes a great deal of time, going back and forth between the blog’s template and the published page to see how it looks. Next, I practice using the blog as if I am not the creator, trying to step away and regarding it as a casual net surfer, an unimpassioned viewer. This seems to be the logical way to go, but it is hard for me to be too critical of my own work, and I often seek the thoughts of others. For example, I wanted to show off my blog one day to my wife and daughter. On first view they both let out a groan because the lime green title was not a good pick for contrast with the background red and therefore tough to read. Being stuck in the idea that it was pretty, I was not thinking about the functionality of it. I changed the line to black for easier viewing, having realized the error of my ways.
I recently added two links to http://www.youtube.com/ showing curling and ultimate Frisbee videos, a search link to Canadian food news, and a feed to http://www.newyorkislanders.com/rss/topStories.asp, a hockey news update. These links will be constantly updated by the original sites, keeping the blog current and adding interest for viewers.
I picked the layout and colour after reviewing several blogs during this course. I found that the most successful ‘serious' intellectual and academically focused ones had a cool look to them, which tended to accentuate the writing, not the design. Blogs for young children had a lot of different colours, moving parts, and generally very interesting visually. I hoped to build something in between. I favoured sites that have a large amount of content on the front page versus ones that had “Enter” signs which you still have to go through before you know much about it, or ones with only links to other sites because it makes the viewer work too hard to get anywhere. There are so many resources on the internet that viewers must scan quickly or get bogged down, which means for me that a web page must be user-friendly immediately or go by the wayside. That is why I added the raison d’blog at the top of the page. Hopefully people will know quickly if they want to continue reading further, and will not be wasting their time.
The El Jefe picture in the right side bar should also give an indication of the blog’s content, as will the sidebar (Canadian Food News) below it. I wanted a solid colour that would provide contrast to the text for easy reading, and since I love earth tones the deep brownish red fit well. It is almost the perfect match for El Jefe’s facial hair, not dissimilar from my own.
A note on El Jefe: It means The Chef in Spanish. My wife and I were in Mexico during winter break, and so Spanish is on my mind, plus Espagnole is one of the mother sauces of French cookery. These little items are amusing to me, so they are included in my blog, which is a reflection of me. El Jefe was copied from Clip Art online, which is allowed for educational purposes according to the information at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx.
The challenges for this project are mostly to do with learning the software and being willing and able to spend the hours necessary to create something of quality. The blog development is perpetual. Since starting the assignment, I have learned much on the technical side. On the design side I also learned a great deal, most importantly, to identify what I liked and why, but it is always the content that makes a good blog good. The content must be what the author wants, since even professional blogs are very personal, and must be something others will want to view. A blog can be simply a journal or diary, but to be interesting to others in your discipline, it must benefit them as well.
When I began this project I thought I had a clear idea of what I wanted and I knew it would take time to develop the blog. I changed my mind several times about the design, but the basics stayed the same. I have changed the content a lot so far, and expect that will continue. The choices a blogger makes as to what goes on the page should be reviewed often. I have enjoyed building it and may keep the blog current after the course is over. The assignment asked for ten entries, which I made the very first night I started, and were all about food and literacy. Since then I have done quite a bit more, including some casual random muses and other things of interest to me. I hope they will generate some discussion at school, but they certainly are fun for me.
In the future the best advice I can offer new bloggers is to try to have fun with it, and do not be afraid to experiment. It is a little disconcerting putting your personal or professional life out for public view, and I know there are many of us in the class who are wary. There are ways to limit access to the blog which I am still learning. To allow students to post to your blog and interact with each other is a whole other issue and bunch of knowledge which I am continuing to explore. In my current job teaching cooking, I am not sure how to build blogging into the curriculum. I may just encourage them to read it and respond in some way to any of the links, articles, images or personal thoughts of mine, and hope to establish a deeper rapport or conversation electronically than we generally have in class. Time will tell how the next stage of Scootermcbaird takes shape.
1 comment:
Nicely done, Pops!
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