Blogging Across the Curriculum

Real World Blogging

You may be wondering what relevance a course blog might have for your future work in interactive design (and related professions.) Actually, Blogging ties directly into real-world, mainstream web uses in many different ways. I’ll mention just a few.

The process of keeping a regularly updated website is excellent interactive design experience. Blogging also provides experience in community and site traffic building. If an IDD student successfully keeps a blog for the duration of their study, they can use this site as a piece in their senior portfolio.

 

 

“Why no updates yesterday:
The murder in Baghdad of non-political humanitarian relief workers left us too sad to even think about discussing web design.”

Jeffrey Zeldman

 


The following list gives some examples of types of weblogs that can be found outside of academia:

Personal Blogs

The most common blogs are personal websites that consist of links to sites of interest and commentary about them or on some other subject. Many web designers and developers keep weblogs on web, design, and code issues.

kottke.org :: home of fine hypertext products
brushstroke.tv
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report
megnut.com - a weblog by meg hourihan
 

Corporate Blogs

Organizations and corporations are increasingly using weblogs as an effort to expand client/customer communications and information.

Microsoft Blogs 
JD on MX 
Planet PDF Weblog

Journalism Blogs

Journalists and pundits have flocked to the blogosphere, mainly because of the ability to create instant updates to news stories and to provide more information (or a more personal view) on a subject than is possible in traditional publishing and media. Newspapers, magazines and TV shows/stations are now running their own blogs, usually as diaries of the hottest news stories. As you will see on the Kevin Sites blog, news agencies sometimes view a journalist’s personal weblog as competition.

Kevin Sites Blog
Mike Wendland's E-Journal 
Lost Remote TV Weblog 
Ms. Magazine Online

Community Blogs

Blogs are being used by online communities, where a member of the community (or sometimes anyone) can contribute links or post a comments. The interests of the group can be specific or fuzzy – I am in the process of setting up a community weblog for the members of the Quinnipiac Women’s Studies Group.

Metafilter | Community Weblog
Blog Sisters
Many-toMany:
Social Software 

Project Management Blogs

This is similar to a community weblog, but with a focus on a specific task. Group blogs are being used by teams for project management as an alternative to email or discussion forums. Most of these are private, password protected sites accessible only to the team members.