How Can We Blog If You Don't Teach Us How?

On Saturday April 13^th the ILC held the first two of four tutorial sessions where our new ILCers gathered to learn how their blog sites work, how to use the tools on Blogger and what we’re looking for in their blogs.

We’ve established some formatting protocols that we want our ILCers to follow so their blogs are pleasing to the eye and there’s some conformity to their blogs.

We also show them examples of “good” blogs and examples of “bad” blogs so they can learn from the examples set by previous ILCers on what makes a successful blog and what will put their readers to sleep.

We had seven ILCers and two chaperones in our morning session and then eight ILCers in our afternoon session.

While everyone was prepared to participate in the hands-on sessions where they could post some practice blogs and get some direct instruction on what they were doing right and what they’re doing wrong, it didn’t work out that way.  In fact, it was a big bust.

Unfortunately, since we were using a District computer lab and needed to access the District’s Internet service, we were flummoxed due to some firewalls put in place to ensure that District staff and students don’t accidently go to inappropriate sites.  How they might see our blog sites as inappropriate is beyond me but there were no District staffers available on this Saturday to provide us with access.

Oh well…

As frustrating as this was, it didn’t stop us from proceeding with the numerous other items to be discussed.

We discussed some of the things the ILC expects from our ILCers, we explained about how to behave, rules they need to follow while back east, what to pack, what kind of loaner items will be available for their use, a few laundry tips, instructions on how to take better photos, what to do with those photos and whether Evil Don should come to the homes of our ILCers.

It would have been very easy to allow these barriers to have shut us down but everyone worked very hard to find ways to proceed.  This is the kind of thinking we like to see.

And for the record, the next two tutorials will be at a venue where we will be able to do what the tutorial is set up to do.