So I had class 1 of 2 for my ‘Build Your Own Blog’ class today. There were a bunch of sandwich board signs pointing students to the class, so I snapped a quick shot of one of them on my way in.

I had tweeted and posted on facebook that I would do a live blog from class, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. Maybe next week?

Overall the class went well. Leading the class today – and seeing it through the eyes of newcomers – I must say it made me pretty proud to be a blogger.

Blogging is in some ways very easy to do, but in so many other ways it’s actually very challenging and requires a lot of learning to do it well.

Basically the class went like this: I told my personal blogging story and background, I took them to a custom blog that I set up just for the class which had videos and links etc. related to the class. From there we visited a bunch of examples of various types of blogs that are out there, we watched a couple useful videos explaining what blogs are, and then for the second half of the class, the students finally got their hands dirty.

Everyone in class learned how to sign up for an account with WordPress.com and they all then set up a test blog in their account, so that we could play around a bit. We ended up only touching on “posts” and “pages” so far for their test blogs, but I’ve given everyone homework to come back with some names for their new blogs for next week where they’ll be able to start building a real blog, and also learn a bunch more  tips and tricks on how to run and market their blogs. They’ll be a lot to cover next week, but it should be really useful to the students.

When researching for my class I came across this fun video called “Blog Song”. I played it at the start of class and it got a few laughs. It reminded me of the fun side of blogging. Enjoy!