Are Mankato teachers ready for blogs?

While I am not sure it is ready for prime time, I've changed our monthly TechTips newsletter from  e-mail to a blog format. The feed is http://oncourse.isd77.k12.mn.us:16080/weblog/djohns1/?flavor=rss2 (Had some trouble figuring this one out in Bloglines.)

While anyone is welcome to subscribe, the  focus of the blog will be the same as that of the newsletter - items of technology and library related interest to teachers in our district.  If the past couple weeks has been any indication, teachers will be seeing what I think are among the most interesting posts from blogs I read.

Initially, I plan to send an email out each Tuesday with a recap and links to each blog entry. I'm guessing it will be a while before people get into RSS feeds or just checking the site for updates.

We'll be doing an inservice for teachers in early February on creating a blog of one's own. We've got the OSX server running its flavor of blojsom (with damn little support from Apple on this, BTW.) 

I'll letcha know how it goes. Any advice on making this successful would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, interesting that this morning, the headlines (1) (2) of the Mankato Free Press  was all about two blogs being written by Mankatoans. Is blogdom going mainstream even here in Left Overshoe, Minnesota?

Comments

[Miguel Guhlin]

Thanks for sharing, Doug! I still remember the day, over a year ago, when I asked Jamie McKenzie about moving his FNO.org enewsletter to blog format...whew! He didn't go for it and had a strong reaction. I haven't seen anything from FNO.org recently, but that may be 'cause I'm not subscribed to the eNewsletter anymore.

However, I am glad to see you've switched over. My district just posted its newsletter online at http://itls.saisd.net/enews/ITS_newsltrs/011106_wc.htm but to be honest, I hadn't really thought about doing it blog format. The content designer likes to have lots of control over the look-n-feel, but maybe for next time, we'll switch over.

Thanks for the great work,

Miguel Guhlin
http://www.mguhlin.net/blog

[Ivan Chew]

Hi Doug, I doubt if the following suggestions count as advice. I'm not sure if I'm addressing what you're asking for, but here goes:
1) Show them how to read a blog (in my experience, some people find it hard to follow bec. they're more used to the typical webpage setup)

2) Show them how to post comments, even if they don't blog. The value of blogs (as opposed to websites) are the discussions arising from posts.

3) Use the blog to feature the work of individuals (regardless of whether they blog or not). And feature "real people" speaking, rather than another e-zine.

4) Tell 'em, "Blogs aren't dangerous; only stupid people are".