Lessons for would-be bloggers

I’ve been blogging for a while in one form or another, mainly telling folk where I’m upto with my music-making. I started off with a “news” section on my website, then graduated to Blogger like a lot of people. Now I’m on WordPress like the thousands of others around the world. I’ve also got a blog on Myspace. It’s a good way of communicating with people who you don’t know very well, it’s fairly impersonal so you don’t need to have a great debate about things, and if you say something you regret saying, you can remove it. On the other hand, it’s a very personal thing, where you can write down things you wouldn’t normally say out loud – things you wouldn’t normally share, and it breaks down barriers between people and ideas.

Why do people want to have a blog? Why would anyone want to read what I’ve got to say? To be honest, I didn’t think about that when I started. I just wanted to pour out my thoughts and ideas and if anyone read them, then ok. As for blogging in education, I’ve tried to get staff and students I work with at City College Manchester to use blogs as online journals or diaries, especially if they’re doing things like business plans or large projects, or maybe even to document trips and visits – take some photographs and add them to the blog and you have an instant travelogue.

If you’re not convinced about blogging, or uncertain about taking the blogging plunge, a good place to start is on Bokardo.com (“Social web design”) and the article “9 lessons for would-be bloggers”

Go on, take the plunge…..

In the meantime,

Listen this article

or read what else I’ve got to say.