Oh blogs, how can I use thee? Let me count the ways. (Blogs Task)

Ok, I admit that is a pretty poor attempt at poetic license (my apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning) but at times I guess I do go all gushy over the lovely goodness that is the internet. Blogs? Well yeah I do love them. They are such a versatile, useful tool.

I have eight Blogger blogs that I contribute to as an author and they all have different uses and agendas. I also have a couple of Wordpress blogs, a Squidoo and probably some other incarnations as well so I thought I would attack this task by auditing the blogs I currently have and discussing their main aim, their effectiveness in acheiving that aim, and assessing their future.

1. This blog (Learning Journey 4 Net11) has it's main purpose as an assessment method for a unit of study at OUA. Hopefully it will be effective in acheiving that aim...I guess my marks will be the indicator there. I imagine that the blog will lie dormant on completion of the unit but it will always be a record of my learning and part of my e-portfolio.
2. e-learning-central.blogspot.com This is my professional blog. I created it as a way to share the things I learn and experience connected with e-learning. Though it has not had a huge readership it has served it's purpose over the last year and I have received some great comments and feedback from it. I have been thinking about mothballing it though because I think there are so many other people doing similar things and often better.
3. CEDAR-project.blogspot.com I createed this blog as a means of communicating to the world the progress of an e-learning project that I was managing last year. I was very happy with the appearance and theme of this blog but I think it was never very successful in getting the message out about
4. My workplace has a blog on Blogger too which is private and only invited people can contribute to it. It has over 450 posts on it all to do with staff updating other staff on their movements and acheived goals. I really think this blog is underutilised and I have often told the rest of the staff the same. The posts are ususally responded to with things like "read" or "thanks" and I find this idea to be such a waste of time. Why bother putting anything if you can't contribute to the discussion? I attempted at one stage to get everyone to drop the blog and move to Ning but we soon moved back to the old blogger. Ning was just too out there for them :(
5. My first blog (be warned if you click the link you get my voki telling you all about it) was put together as part of a Learnscope Mini Project. It was my original learning and playing environment for blogs. This is what got me into blogging in the first place. I got so many real life complimentary comments about this and it really helped to launch my e-learning career. I haven't posted to it for ever and probably never will again as the project is long finished, but it will always be the original "rhysatwork" installation.
6. I created this wordpress blog and this Squidoo Lens as part of an experiment in boosting the "google juice" of an e-learning course. The idea was to harness the power of web2.0 to jetison an online Responsible Service of alcohol course to Page One on Google. It proved to be so effective that I sold ten courses on the first day. I blogged about it here. I plan on duplicating and enhancing the process with future courses and products.
7. My boss set up a couple of private Blogger blogs for use by students but they have not been embraced for reasons yet to be clarilied. I think this use is great (after all isn't that what this Learning Journey 4 Net 11 blog is all about?) but you really need to encourage the students and nurture them through the teething stages.
8. I am in the process of setting up a self hosted wordpress installation for the purpose of keeping our clients informed about the current business, new courses and other tidbits at my workplace. I went through the installation process some time ago and it has just been left in limbo since then. I have been getting a steady stream of spam comments posted to it though. I'm not sure what benefit these spammers think they are getting by posting to such an empty blog though.....
9. Finally I have been using the blog on my ning network to start to gather my e-portfolio together. I am not sure if this will prove to be the best platform for this use for blogging but I guess I can try it out and see how it goes.

There, my blogging audit is complete. I hope this meets the needs of the Blog Task in module 3 because I really need to get my bum into gear with my concepts assignment.......

HTML webpage task

The HTML task took me a couple of weeks to work through due to travelling and all sorts of interuptions. At the time of writing this, I havn't uploaded my webpage to the webct presentations area so I have not validated yet, but I thought I might quickly chuck together some words of reflection while it was still fresh in my head (and hopefully before the hoards get back from the beach :( ).

My experience with HTML in the past has been all self taught stumblings. I built my first page back in 2000/2001 I think. I was newly married and heading off on a journey and I started dabbling with writing a page and using it as wine journal and holiday log. I seem to remember I toiled away at it for a while but found the process of writing in HTML to be tedious and for me quite difficult and slow. Funnily enough, not much has changed... I use HTML code snippets quite a bit in my day to day job role to adjust things here and there but it is really at a very basic
level.

During the 26 lessons, which I thought were all quite useful, I was constantly interupted by all things holiday so the "sense of achievement I found at the end was more to do with finally having completed the task and finally being able to right this blog post than anything else. I don't think my page is particularly aestheticly pleasing or interesting, or that it fills any other purpose than to complete this task. I would have liked to spend some time to make a page which did have some other purpose but I simply could not spare/find the time.

I did learn quite a bit from having completed the 26 lessons. Possibly the main thing is that I like WYSIWYG editors much better than HTML. I think I must be a more visual person. I am happy to play around with the HTML in the background to make minor adjustments but I much prefer
moving things around visually than in code. I know all you professional web designers prefer to write in code (or at least the ones I have talked to) and that WYSIWYG is only for hacks like me, so call me lazy, but I prefer it that way.

What is the difference between blogging and HTML? Well blogging is writing a web log, HTML is the code that holds that page together. HTML is the bricks and the blog is the building. I much prefer writing a blog about HTML than writing a blog in HTML.

Incidentally, I was given a text on CSS for Christmas (edit.. I just did a google on the name of the text and found THE WHOLE BOOK is available online!!! It is really good so here is the link ) and I was hoping to integrate some CSS into my web page for the course but I doubt I will have the time for that. I will give it a try though and let you all know how it goes. One reason I was doing this course in the first place was to learn more about HTML and CSS and I guess I have already done that but there is soooo much further to go...