211 lines
10 KiB
HTML
211 lines
10 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
||
<html lang="en">
|
||
<head>
|
||
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
|
||
<meta charset="utf-8">
|
||
<meta content="IE=edge" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible">
|
||
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" name="viewport">
|
||
<link href="../../old/assets/style/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
|
||
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
|
||
<script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/html5shiv/3.7.2/html5shiv.min.js"></script>
|
||
<script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/respond/1.4.2/respond.min.js"></script>
|
||
<![endif]-->
|
||
<script>
|
||
(function() {
|
||
var s, scheme, wf;
|
||
|
||
this.WebFontConfig = {
|
||
google: {
|
||
families: ['Amaranth:700,700italic:latin', 'Inconsolata::latin']
|
||
}
|
||
};
|
||
|
||
wf = document.createElement('script');
|
||
|
||
scheme = 'https:' === document.location.protocol ? 'https' : 'http';
|
||
|
||
wf.src = scheme + "://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1/webfont.js";
|
||
|
||
wf.type = 'text/javascript';
|
||
|
||
wf.async = 'true';
|
||
|
||
s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
|
||
|
||
s.parentNode.insertBefore(wf, s);
|
||
|
||
}).call(this);
|
||
</script>
|
||
|
||
<title>Looking back on a year of blogging | eRambler</title>
|
||
<link href="https://erambler.co.uk/rss.xml" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">
|
||
</head>
|
||
<body class="single-post">
|
||
<div id="container">
|
||
<header class="page-header">
|
||
<hgroup>
|
||
<div class="h1"><a href="../../">eRambler</a></div>
|
||
<div class="lead">Jez Cope's blog on becoming a research technologist</div>
|
||
</hgroup>
|
||
<nav><ul>
|
||
<li><a href="../../">Home</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="../../about/">About</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="../../blogroll/">Blogroll</a></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
</nav>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<section>
|
||
<div class="row">
|
||
<p class="archive-warning"><strong><em>Please note:</em></strong> this older content has been <strong>archived</strong> and is no longer fully linked into the site. Please go to the <a href="../../">current home page</a> for up-to-date content.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="content">
|
||
<article class="h-entry">
|
||
<div class="row">
|
||
<h1 class="post-title p-name">Looking back on a year of blogging</h1>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="row">
|
||
<div class="post-info">
|
||
<div class="post-date dt-published">
|
||
<a class="u-url" href="http://erambler.co.uk/blog/looking-back-on-a-year-of-blogging/">Wednesday 20 January 2010</a>
|
||
</div>
|
||
Tagged with
|
||
<ul class="post-tags">
|
||
<li class="p-category"><span class="tag">Blogging</span></li>
|
||
<li class="p-category"><span class="tag">Reflection</span></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="post-body">
|
||
<div class="post-content e-content">
|
||
<p>Looking at the date of my last post, it’s been almost exactly two months since I last posted. I suppose that’s not surprising, since those two months contained an awful lot of stuff happening elsewhere in my life, such as moving house and Christmas.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>However, it does mean that I’ve so far missed out on the traditional ritual of looking back on one’s year to date and using it as blog-fodder. So here we are then. Time to have a look back and see what I’ve learned from the experience so far.</p>
|
||
|
||
<!--more-->
|
||
|
||
<p>2009 has been my first full year of blogging. It took me a while to get going, and to begin finding my voice (I’m still working on that), but then I made some <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/03/06/blog-career-news/">decisions about my future career</a> and suddenly this blog had a purpose: to give me a way to join in the e-learning community, reflect and learn. Since then, I’ve posted on pretty much whatever’s seemed appropriate, and started getting to grips with what makes this medium tick.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h1 id="what-did-people-read">What did people read?</h1>
|
||
|
||
<p>My most popular (i.e. most viewed) posts seem to fit into one or both of two categories: “hot topics” and conversations.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>By “hot topics”, I mean subjects which interest a large portion of the online community enough to see what I’ve got to say. Examples of this type of post include:</p>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>My <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/03/15/beginners-guide-to-twitter-part-i/">three part</a> <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/03/16/beginners-guide-to-twitter-part-ii/">beginners guide</a> <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/03/17/beginners-guide-to-twitter-part-iii/">to Twitter</a>;</li>
|
||
<li>A brief note on the <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/05/27/university-sheffield-google-mail/">University of Sheffield’s decision to use Google Mail</a>.</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p>By “conversations”, I refer to posts which are actively trying to engage with my audience. My favourite of these (and my favourite post of the year) has to be:</p>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/05/30/ask-the-readers-why-use-technology-in-teaching/">Ask the readers: Why use technology in teaching?</a></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p>I think its success lies in the fact that it was a question broad enough for everyone to have an opinion on and important enough for many people to <em>want</em> to comment on. I intentionally kept the original post quite short, and ensured that the question I was asking stood out.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Then, of course, there are posts which fall into both categories, such as my <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/08/19/moving-to-a-more-agile-vle/">contribution to the debate on the death or otherwise of the VLE</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h1 id="what-didnt-work">What didn’t work?</h1>
|
||
|
||
<p>I tried a couple of different things to keep things interesting, such as posting a weekly summary of links that I’d found around the internet and trying monthly themes, but neither of these really caught on as I didn’t have the motivation to keep on with them.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>I think perhaps the monthly theme idea would work better for a blog which was consciously aimed at being educational resource for the reader, forming part of the ongoing story which keeps learners engaged. For this blog, though, which is more reflective and tends to be a reaction to my own thoughts and experiences, it feels unnecessarily prescriptive.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h1 id="other-highlights">Other highlights</h1>
|
||
|
||
<p>In August, I moved from Wordpress.com to my own self-hosted blog, thanks to the generosity of a friend with a server to host it. I wanted to have scope to experiment and expand, so I went with <a href="http://mu.wordpress.org/">Wordpress MU</a>, the multi-user version of Wordpress which allows multiple blogs to run off a single installation.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>I also tried my hand at writing some <a href="http://erambler.co.uk/2009/08/16/something-a-little-different/">fiction</a> in response to a challenge on Joanna Young’s <a href="http://confidentwriting.com/">Confident Writing</a> blog. I really enjoyed it, but decided that it didn’t really fit into my plan for this blog, so I took advantage of Wordpress MU and started a <a href="http://personal.erambler.co.uk/">separate non-work-related blog</a> to keep all of the random writings and photos that I wanted to share.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h1 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h1>
|
||
|
||
<p>I’ve found blogging to be valuable. It lets me reflect and organise my thoughts in a form suitable for consumption by other human beings; it lets me connect to the e-learning community and build a useful professional network; it lets me take part in a global conversation.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Enough cliches.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Here’s looking forward to the next twelve months.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="disqus_thread"></div>
|
||
<script>
|
||
/* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */
|
||
var disqus_shortname = 'erambler'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname
|
||
var disqus_identifier = 'tag:erambler.co.uk,2010-01-20:/blog/looking-back-on-a-year-of-blogging/';
|
||
var disqus_title = 'Looking back on a year of blogging'
|
||
var disqus_url = 'http://erambler.co.uk/blog/looking-back-on-a-year-of-blogging/';
|
||
var disqus_developer = 0;
|
||
if (window.location.hostname == 'localhost')
|
||
disqus_developer = 1;
|
||
|
||
/* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */
|
||
(function() {
|
||
var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;
|
||
dsq.src = 'http://' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';
|
||
(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);
|
||
})();
|
||
</script>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</article>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sidebar">
|
||
<div class="sidebar-box about-me h-card">
|
||
<p>Hi, I’m <a href="http://erambler.co.uk" class="p-name u-url">Jez Cope</a> and this is my
|
||
blog, where I talk about technology in research and higher
|
||
education, including:</p>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Research data management;</li>
|
||
<li>e-Research;</li>
|
||
<li>Learning;</li>
|
||
<li>Teaching;</li>
|
||
<li>Educational technology.</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="sidebar-box links">
|
||
<h2>Me elsewhere</h2>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/jezcope" rel="me">Twitter</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://github.com/jezcope" rel="me">github</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/jezcope">LinkedIn</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="http://diigo.com/user/jezcope">Diigo</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://www.zotero.org/jezcope">Zotero</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="http://gplus.to/jezcope">Google+</a></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="row">
|
||
<footer><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="license">
|
||
<img alt="Creative Commons License" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png" style="border-width:0">
|
||
</a>
|
||
<span href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dct:title" rel="dct:type" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
|
||
eRambler
|
||
</span>
|
||
by
|
||
<a href="http://erambler.co.uk/" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL" xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#">
|
||
Jez Cope
|
||
</a>
|
||
is licensed under a
|
||
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="license">
|
||
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license
|
||
</a>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</section>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<script>
|
||
if (!/^http:\/\/localhost/.test(window.location)) {
|
||
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
|
||
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-10201101-1']);
|
||
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
|
||
|
||
(function() {
|
||
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
|
||
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
|
||
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
|
||
})();
|
||
}
|
||
</script>
|
||
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html>
|