The web 2.0 super-blogger is a species seen on the web commonly blogging on his own site about unimportant matters, is usually a member of a tightly-knit clique and has the following traits:
- Name checks other super-bloggers
- Overuses sarcasm, Latin phrases and words such as hiatus and grok
- Carefully dissects views of anyone who disagrees with him in a long blog post
- While dissecting dissenting views, also brings to attention less important details such as minor spelling or grammatical errors to further “drive home the message”, thereby absolving himself of any such errors on his part
- Swears profusely in blog posts and justifies it with “artistic licence”
- Tries to raise donations on promise of a t-shirt, more posts or a “good, fuzzy feeling inside”
- Posts photos of himself with important-looking guests
- Tells other people and large companies what they should be doing
- Always thinks he’s correct and consistently mocks others who challenge this assumption and lose
- Takes the future of one organisation to heart, defending its every action and becoming impervious to any negative comments about it (commonly involving Apple, Inc.)
As if I didn’t already have enough commitments, I’ve been wangled into contributing to yet another blog. This time, it’s the turn of my employers, the University of Reading Careers Advisory Service. They are moving into the 21st century with a slew of brand new technology, including the use of blogs, podcasts, screencasts and wikis as well as encouraging staff creativity by allowing them to dynamically update the website.
Many of the longstanding practices of the service, including the use of presentations, are being completely overhauled. They are right in saying that current students have very different needs and expectations to students of a couple of decades ago, and the service needs to change in order to remain competitive and relevant. Student participation in CAS activities has been steadily declining over the years and now it’s time to do something about it.
Leading the way is student interaction with the service. This includes getting students more involved with what the service does and see inside it, into the minds of the advisers. The blogs will go some way to helping with this, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more to do and the only way to do it is to engage with the students and see what they like. In due course, this will hopefully lead to a leading Careers Advisory Service who can show others just how it’s done!
RedGloo is the blogging system of the University of Reading’s School of Systems Engineering. It’s somewhere where people can write about their course as well as daily life and get feedback and help from their peers and staff.
Just before I began my time at the university, I started my own blog about university life. When I found out about RedGloo, this became redundant and I didn’t update it for months. Now, I’ve decided to get rid of everything on the website and redirect it to RedGloo, where it’ll be of more use. Along with purchasing RedGloo.co.uk, this means that students now have two easy ways of getting to the site and blogging away!
ProBlogging is a technique invented by University of Reading lecturer Mike Evans that is designed to help you make your blog make money.
It’s a combination of search engine optimisation, blogging techniques and attracting traffic to your site. This then allows you to utilise advertisements such as Google AdSense to monetise your blog.
ProBlogging is taught as an extra-curricular university modules to IT and other interested students, and I’ve been attending the lectures to see how I can monetise my blogs. For example, wackomenace is currently a PageRank 4 site, and I’ll be looking to increase that by writing more relevant blog posts and attarcting more traffic to the site. I’ll also be experimenting with Google adverts, even though I’ll be making them non-intrusive.
