Sept 1 session (morning): Main discussion points

Ok, we had our first session this morning at 10am to 12.30pm.

Rajen (L) & Ivan (R)

We asked participants what were their perceptions of blogs at the start of the session. Some mentioned "Personal Diary", "Personal homepages/ websites", "Daily Journals", "Online Hyde Park", "Brag Site". [Perhaps participants can comment here to see if their perceptions have changed after the session. Rajen & I reviewed our morning session and felt we could have shared more examples of educational & academic blogs].

Participants learnt how to create blogs, name their blogs, how to post comments, change the template of the blog, and how to delete their blog (we used Blogger.com).

Someone asked what's the difference between blogs and Discussion Forums/ Chat Rooms/ Community Groups. Unfortunately we didn't have time to address that question.

Most seemed keen to find out more about legal issues & copyright w.r.t. blogging. The session also covered how to search for blogs using tools like Technorati.com

From the feedback forms, we think the session went quite well. Of course like all things, there are always lot of room for improvement.

To participants who manage to find their way to this demo site, please feel free to share your feedback and comments.

Checklist for 1 Sept course

We've confirmed the course package (for purposes of copyright, we can't show them here). The training is confirmed on 1st Sept 2005.

Last we heard, both sessions are fully registered. 45 people signed up, so let's see if all turn up that day.

Checklist:

• Do a reece of the training venue
• Rehearsal
• Powerpoint slides (what would we do without Powerpoint?)
• Printouts of the courseware
• Participants' namelist

We're about set, Rajen.

What the demo will cover

We have about an hour for the hands-on portion for the course. We'll be showing them how to create a blog using Blogger -- to show them something else while we are using Blogger here just doesn't seem quite right, does it? :)

Step 1: Creating an account
Step 2: Choosing a name
Step 3: Choosing a template

That's it. Then we'll go around the classroom to help the participants.

How's that?

I think most might be stuck with choosing a name for the blog.

Course objectives - Blogging course: MICA Innovation Fiesta 2005

[For reasons of copyright, we're unable to show the full content of the course]

Ok, we want to define the course objectives here.

1. Define, understand the types and uses of blogs
2. Know basic terminologies associated with blogs
3. Create your own blog
4. Make an informed choice on blogs and blogging

Anything else to add here?

Finally, a name!

Hello World.

Our names are Rajendra Munoo and Ivan Chew. We started this blog as a demonstration tool for the Blogging Course that we have been asked to conduct for the MICA Innovation Fiesta 2005:

"Blogging: New Tool of the E-Generation".
Date: 1 Sept 2005
Time: 10am - 12.30pm (Session #1)/ 2.30pm - 5pm (Session #2)
Venue: NLB Academy (Toa Payoh Community Library)

Rajen has a blog at ExpatLibrarian. I'm sometimes known in the Blogosphere as the RamblingLibrarian.

We're conducting this particular course for the first time. We'll see how it goes
We've got very good feedback from our first run (both sessions). Certainly the participants understood more about blogs, what is it (and isn't). We'll be updating this blog from time to time, depending on future sessions.