Creating a group of bloggers

A group session was held yesterday, Friday 13th March (hope that isn’t a bad omen!) which brought together a group of volunteers from Learning Services at Edge Hill University (my department), who were interested in, wanted to know more about, thought they should be, or already were - blogging.

As the saying goes, one volunteer is worth a hundred pressed men so the group were engaged, interested, open and willing to find out more, regardless of past experience. Mike Nolan, Acting Head of Web Services and I delivered the workshop which discussed what is a blog?, why should we blog?, what kind of structure should a Learning Services blog take, and how would the blog fit into the wider University picture?

In just over an hour, the group watched the commoncraft guide to blogging, asked questions, wrote for some their first ever blog post, queried tags and categories and had many more questions than we could answer in this, what will turn out to be, part one.

I’m writing about it because I want to document the growth of the group, which will be evidenced by the posts that you see at Learning Service blog, and can’t be measured in the true sense, but which will be clear as the writers find their blogging voice, and possibly even a wider digital identity.

We’re going to meet again in three weeks, after the group have had a bit of practice in writing and posting, to further discuss how we move this project forward.

I should say that this is linked to the overhaul of Learning Services web presence that Martin Baxter, ICT and Media Resource Manager and I have been working on over the last 15 months with a cross service project group, and the blog posts will be directed (using categories) to the most relevant parts of the web site to ensure that the content of the blog, which will be varied, reaches the right audience.