May 12 2006
Blogging Lessons?
I had to prepare one of the IT rooms at work earlier — make sure everything is working, plugged in (unplugging the network cables seems to be a hobby of some of the kids), clean up sweetie wrappers, etc. Did it in about 20 minutes and then went to speak to the Head of Science. I came back to check up on things to see 30 kids each with their own WordPress weblog being taught how to write a book review…
Why didn’t I have lessons like that when I was in school?!
Warning
This post is over 6 months old. This means that, despite my best intentions, it may no longer be accurate. Age, motherhood, experience, loss... these things have all changed me from when this blog was started back in the heady (ha) days of my youth.
As much as I would like to go back and edit 10 years of archives to provide an insight into the 'me' of now — to update coding snippets and revise website advice — it would probably take years to do so (by which point I'd have to start again!) This would defeat the point of keeping these archives anyway.
Please take these posts for what they are: a brief look into my past, my history, my journey.
34 Responses so far
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I’m sure I told you months ago, our hands on support consultants run a “blogging for teachers” course at our school using WP…. Most of the kids find it funny – “WP? Do me a favour..WHY are they using THAT? That is SO crap..” etc. Along with “Teachers are too old to have weblogs, thats just sad.”.
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*dies*
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Well, if it was anything like when I was in school… it’d be because we rarely had a computer to ourselves and we never had that many lessons with computers! Still, if I’d have been doing blogging in school… I probably wouldn’t be doing it now!
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Oh I dunno… it’s not that hard to use WordPress, so well why waste a lesson on it. As a matter of fact I had an exam which was supposed to show what I’ve learned throught the 4 year computer science classes… well more than half of it consisted of things we DIDN’T learn at school (like working with Ms Word). Still… you don’t have problems with WP, heck you’ve made your own CMS :)
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I think that’s pretty stupid. Nobody should be forced to have a blog, and only people who really want to should have one, and figure it out. They shouldn’t HAVE to learn how to blog or else it will corrupt the blogging community into the original few bloggers like you, Jem, and Rosemarie, and change it into “OMG! EVERYONE HAS A BLOG SO I NEED ONE TOO! DADDY! PAY FOR MY LESSONS!”
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That sounds fun. We waste our IT classes on Excel and how to steal copyrighted images. It’s really stupid. Hence why blogging classes sounds fun, I guess. XD Although I’m not sure I’d want to see the weblogs of some of my classmates. I think of all the netspeak, disussions of fashion and lots of other boring things that could ensue… argh.
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.. *copies Rosemarie* *dies*
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All of my K-12 education did very little with computers. I remember one particularly horrible class where we had to write a 12 page research paper just to demonstrate mastery of MS Word margins… However, I have had a course or two at University where assignments were either uploaded to a website (C++) or published to a class blog (some fluffy meaning of info tech / media and the arts courses).
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It’s only because of cool lessons like that I want to go back to school lol. Even though it might not be that hard to use it’s a hell of a lot better than trying to pass time in a math class ;)
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That’s awesome :O. I’m in the eighth grade and we haven’t had any lessons like that. In sixth grade, we all learnt how to make ‘webpages’. I was still in the Neopets phase then but knew basic CSS.
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Heh, the internet didn’t even exist when I was in school, it was new while I was a college student. At least they were being taugh something good like WP and not some crap like Front Page (or worse, My Space…*shudders at the thought*).
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Dude, that is so awesome!
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Hum. I know some people think it’s stupid, but it’s much better than anything my teachers ever taught me in any of my tech classes. Our HTML ‘course’ sucked… I was the only one who produced a decent looking page (which could only be made with clip art, har…) and then we were taught Dreamweaver. Blech!
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That’s pretty awesome. But that would never happen where I live. I live in a freakishly conservative area of the country and things that were trendy five months ago in the rest of the world have just reached my town. Myspace just caught on; WordPress will take another year at least.
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Ha. I think I blogged not long ago about Blogging for Dummies. I want that book. Here: http://tinyurl.com/htu4a Ha ha. Anyway, if anyone’s wondering why my site URL is my Xanga right now (yucky yucky coding on Xanga sites, but…), it’s because my hostess can’t host anything but fanlistings anymore. I’m looking for a host… yeah… I want to take that class. And I don’t think that anyone in /this/ area (where I live) will ever catch on to WordPress.
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Oh, but in computer class for seventh grade, we used Dreamweaver. And we /had/ to make pages… with tables… and no editing the HTML (the editor couldn’t be found or something…) OR adding any CSS. So I had a really ugly table page… with using only HTML…
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How… interesting. I can’t quite decide if that’s awesome or lame. Ha, at least some of you were taught Dreamweaver. I had to make a website using Frontpage, back in 1999. I refused to use the “features” and insisted on hand-coding everything, but Frontpage persisted in inserting its own nonsense everywhere. Gah.
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This year we also made ‘websites’ (I’m in eight grade). My teacher told everyone to use dreamweaver but I got away using desktop FTP and Notepad ;). A lot of people just littered ‘blinkies’ onto their pages. Mine, I’m proud to say was the only one that was valid xhtml strict and was the only one using CSS. Well, that’s not exactly true. People used colored scrollbar codes they copied and pasted and I wrote some CSS for a friend of mine.
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I’m envy with those kids…
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I didn’t even know what html was until 6th form, and I ignored css cus I didn’t understand it, and didn’t think it was even important. Only certain people were allowed to study IT at GCSE in my first secondary school and I’m pretty sure it was to do with where you live. I knew more about computers than any of those idiots. Look at me know, I even mastered what CSS is for. woo.
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Wow, we don’t have lessons like that here :O The lucky kids, but what we do get to do is make our own webpage. Basically re-telling some of us what we already know. Very boring. And the teachers are so horrible at it I had to help them -.- Not saying that Im good :p
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In my day we barely had computers. My IT lessons consisted of constant reboots and run // doc shit that no-one could ever do. Plus the computers were about five foot high. I’m so old. :P V xx
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Damn, I wish we could do that… In my Info Proc class, our ‘webpages’ had to be made with freaking Contribute, not even Dreamweaver! (Big problem with Contribute = no direct html editing, at least Dreamweaver has that) People were using tables and font tags all over the place, it was like standards slaughter in there… :P Lucky bastards… *goes off to grumble*
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This is off-topic, but I was reading your ‘Customising Form Fields’ article on Tutorialtastic and wanted to point out that fieldset {border: 0;} will not remove the default border in Opera. However, fieldset {border: 0 solid #000} will :)
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Blogging lessons? Wow. What has the world come to? What happened to painstakinly teaching oneself how to use WordPress?
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Seems like everyone is pretty divided over this one… I’m going to have to go with the fact that its a bad idea. Lets add more boring blogs to the internet. (Yes, I know, I’m a boring blog… FEEL THE HYPOCRICY!) If someone wants a blog, they should learn to do it themselves, classes would be just… weird. I never thought it was that tough to learn. Though as long as its being taught correctly, whats the problem? We learned to design webpages in 6th grade… with frontpage. Mixed feelings I guess. Happy mothers day everyone! Even if you don’t celebrate it.
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The only read computer classes I’ve had, I’ve had here. Last year our teacher refused to follow the GCSE course, so we learned Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver and HTML (all of which I already knew). This year, however, it’s pure Excel, Word, etd. Boring. I wish we had a class that involved WordPress and nice stuff.
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Actually, it’d be more interesting, I’d like it/I’d take it. But, it’d (yeah) be pretty useless. WordPress is too user-friendly/easy-to-use to have classes on.
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Jemmie, sorry I would like to ask you how did you make the skip to content link in your previous layout? I saw it is an important element in Web2.0 well made websites and a requisite when it comes to validation. As always, you’r ever forward us, humble human beings :P
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Wow! I would have loved a class like that! It’s not fair *mutter*
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Maybe they can be taught to write interesting blogs. I see way too many bland and boring blogs out there these days. It makes me sad.
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Yes, why didn’t we have lessons like that? Damnit!
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Wtf? That’s not right. We should have had it too! *sniffles*
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WTF+LOL+OMG Super Combo, 1500 points. It’s not surprising though. Magazines have been outputting all sorts of crap about these AWESOME NEW OVEN-FRESH THINGS CALLED BLOGS, not taking into account that blogs have been around for quite a while. I’d hate to see it become the next big trend.
