Final Thoughts

Well, it’s time to bring this blog to a close –

This blog was created as a class project for two Emerging Media courses in Arts and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. Our assignment was to create a blog about a topic of interest to us. So I chose to write about examples of blogging and podcasting in the world of public history — the focus of my degree program. And about things I learned during the class projects. 

UTD Prof Dan Langendorf with students.

Lessons Learned

• Blogging helped me find a voice.  This has been a great learning experience for me — finding out how people are using technology to create their own history experiences. It’s forced me to focus, organize my thoughts, and improve my writing — giving me an opportunity to express myself that I rarely have at work. I’m also glad I took the emerging media courses when I did. In just the three years since I took the classes, the focus of these classes has shifted to twitter and other social media. I like the longer format of a blog post because it encourages a deeper exploration of  a topic.  
• There is an endless variety of ways to use blogging software.  Because blogs are an easy way to get content on the Internet, they can be used in ways the developers probably never thought of. One classmate used her blog to communicate with her ‘Ultimate Frisbee’ team. Another to keep family and friends up-to-date about a friend in the hospital. Another to explore an interest in the history of Negro Leagues Baseball, and another to explore contemporary religious issues. Several classmates used their blog to spotlight their artwork.  Resulting in one of the things I like best about blogging …  (next bullet point please.)
• The democratic (with a small “d”) nature of blogging. You do not have to be a programmer or Web designer.  Therefore, pretty much anyone can do it.  That way, you can focus on content — and exploring, discovering, and sharing ideas.  This means many more participants, more voices in the conversation, which is a great service to humankind. I am grateful to the developers of WordPress (my choice) and others for making this possible.  
• Must decide on the tradeoff of control versus content. However, the ease of blogging software comes with a price. You don’t have ultimate control of how your blog looks unless you download and start tinkering with the code yourself.  So you must decide.  Do you want to go with the defaults and focus on content?  Or do you want to spend more time with the code, which may mean less time for exploring and writing? I purposely chose to go with defaults.  For the most part, that has worked out well.  However, just recently WordPress discontinued a theme I was using for another blog, so I’ve got to go back to the drawing board to set it up again.  
• The beauty of permalinks. One of the side benefits of a blog is that it’s a great way to collect links to other blog posts, Web sites, articles, podcasts, etc. It’s nice to look back through the posts, be reminded of a great find, and link directly to it. The disadvantage, though, is that links change — pages are moved to another location in a site or removed altogether. So it is important to hunt for the permalink and, when possible, to build permalinks into our own content.
• Biggest challenge for me was to avoid getting bogged down when writing a post.  Writing is not my strength, and I agonize over words and paragraphs. However, I’m trying to learn that if it conveys the thought, it’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just effective. 

Going Forward

I am currently writing a family history blog — recording the stories and history of our family — for my extended family. I would provide a link to it, but alas, to provide the greatest freedom in writing and ensure the greatest privacy to family members, it is password protected. 

Thanks

To my instructors, especially Dan Langendorf, who exposed me to a lot of new ideas and created an environment where every student could succeed. Dan is knowledgeable, encouraging, and inspiring.

To my classmates and friends, especially Judy, Andrea, and Cone, who actually read what I wrote, and provided an occasional comment, and/or “atta girl!”

Advertisement