I’ve not had any luck starting any memes. And I expect my streak will continue.
But I am curious if perhaps others would share via comments or in their own sites, What was your “Blog-Ha” Moment? (Blog Aha!) What was it the triggered the 10,000 watt light bulb going off in your head that screamed, “Wow! There is something really powerful about this way of expression”
A good collection of these mini stories would be useful when doing the “Intro to Blogs 101” type workshops. It relates to my recent wonderings about the wisdom of starting new faculty bloggers with writing in empty blogs vs reading existing ones.
Or it may just be interesting.
My Own Blag-ha
The meme will surely be lame since I do not have a precise starting point (it was before I started blogging!)… I cannot recall exactly a big light going off. I know that sometime in 2002 I noticed that two key sites I read a lot for instructional technology, OLDaily and Serious Instructional Technology were organized in this newest stuff first but archived format. I vague recall creating a site at Userland powered editthispage.com but never doing anything with it. So the moment was really in the reading of other blogs and connecting that they were published with tools themselves in a web page that clicked for me. My reading expanded as I connected with colleagues Brian Lamb and D’Arcy Norman who were both blogging then in MovableType.
It clicked that it looked like software that was bone simple to use, so it might have potential for faculty and students to create content without bothering with HTML and web editors. And the built in search, archiving, and comments were something one does not get by hand coding their web pages.
As my blog circles expanded, I found the blogs I favored the most in terms of both style, variety, and content were MT published ones, so that lead me in April 2003 to hoist my own.
It was much after the fact that it dawned on me that I had actually blogged for 6 months back in 2000 when I did a sabbatical in Arizona, New Zealand, and Australia (see from .az to .nz & .au), posting almost daily entries, links, and photos. But that was all by tedious hand coding.
So step up– what was your own “Blog-Ha” moment or moments?
I haven’t distilled a blog-ha moment, but I can say that before my elementary students started blogging, they spent one class session reading Blook and Blogs and the blogs Anne Davis’ JHH bloggers created. They also had a chance to leave comments in those blogs. If I were to do it again, I’d use the powerpoint presentation that Anne’s bloggers created instead of or along with the Blook. I’m glad we started this way. It gave them high quality examples of blogs to get their blog scheme started out right. The blook and the powerpoint are probably aren’t a good match.
I think I had my second “blog-ha” moment this past week. I had seen blogging from a few years back, but it only recently kicked in for me. I’m also trying to get a group here at the U of A blogging together – some already are.
The kicker was this weekend telling my aunt and uncle about blogging and then seeing on their faces how this little tool could help their kids (she’s a TA in an elementary school) grow in their writing.
Hi Alan,
published a post re: my Blog-Ha moment at:
http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/2005/06/05#a1577
cheers
Sebastian