On Blogging Well

I thought it might be helpful to offer some advice and point you to some links to help you with your blogging projects. It's best to think of your blog as a personal expression and a place to share your ideas and thoughts - much like a diary or journal, but much more public. In the case of your ABEL blog, it might be helpful to think of your blog as an online version of a thoughtful comment in a class discussion. Tell us what you think, what you feel, what you heard, and show us where to find it. Most blogs have a theme, or focus and many have several categories of topics. Occasionally, it's OK to stray off of your topic, especially if it is course-related.

As a reminder, the assignment reads:

Blog Project (2 weekly posts; with a focus on class-related topic of your choice)

• Start blog and begin weekly posts by January 25th, project due April 23rd
• Topic to be determined by the second week of class and subject to approval
• Average of two posts per week
• Post comments on other students’ blogs

Part of the assignment is to post comments on each others blogs. Neither the posts or comments need to be lengthy to be significant. The advantage to this assignment is that it can be accomplished five minutes at a time, at your convenience, and the focus is you - what you think, what you know, what you've heard, seen or done. Remember, just like a research paper, if you use someone else's material, credit the original source and put it in quotations.

Here are some links to help you with the process.  

• Five Steps to Good Blogging from Newsome.org  
• Blogging Tips  

Here are some ideas for blog postings:  

• Sign up for a Google Alert on your topic and receive email notifications of new stories about your topic.
• Blog about something we discussed in class.
• Blog about someone else's topic.
• Link to a site that has free streaming audio of recording related to your topic

Here are some good examples of music blogs to model:

• The Score - a New York Times blog by American composers
• Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra blog
• The Brass Factory
• Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise
• MusicThing

Here are some of the most popular non-music-related blogs:

• Lifehacker
• Engadget
  
• The Dilbert blog
• Boing Boing

So, keep up with your blogs, and like any writer, just do it. Also remember that the thing that draws people to blogs is fresh content, so keep generating new thoughts. I look forward to reading your posts and comments.