Keeping it interesting
What makes people keep reading a blog? Surely, the readers need to be getting something out of their reading. How does a non-writer (at least someone who does not write interesting stuff) keep people coming back to a blog. What is it that I can write or do to make this place more compelling. I joined the Web 2.0 art education community that Craig Roland started on ning. With that community, people seem to be sharing what they are learning about art education and Web 2.0. It's interesting that he publicized it well, and it seems to be alive and growing.
The question remains, how can I get other people to have access to a VCU blog? Perhaps, I just need to abandon the VCU platform and make a blog on blogger or WordPress or some other commercial site. It's tough to abandon the academic, non-ad laden site though.
Comments
It is difficult to know which platform to use. The VCU platform makes it easy for students to access but means that you cannot get outside folks involved.
To get readers interested and keep them coming back is a dilemma that all bloggers have I think. If the blog is for a class then once the class ends most students will not continue to check it unless it is clearly communicated that the blog will stay open and that their continued participation would be appreciated. In that case though, I would consider changing the name. Because a "class blog" seems finite in that once the class is over, how could you continue to keep writing?
Does Craig Roland post questions to prompt responses or are his students just posting what they're learning of their own accord? What is his classroom atmosphere like that fosters such dedicated interest? How did he get the students to care so much about communicating their knowledge to and with each other?
Posted by: katie | August 10, 2007 10:22 AM
interesting ideas about changing the title, etc. somehow, i need to get a real "readership" audience going. it may be that i need to find a way to promote this blog through meta tags so that when someone googles "art ed" and "web 2.0" this blog comes up as a hit. any more thoughts?
Posted by: Melanie | August 27, 2007 1:43 PM