I frequently do workshops for librarians. I am brand new to blogging – so it is probably completely nuts to even consider doing a workshop. On the other hand – I have a lot of experience with jumping into techie stuff with very little knowledge or money – and producing functional products. My workshops are usually designed for true novices that are afraid of trying out techie applications because they are intimidated by tech geniuses. Believe me, I am definitely not intimidating.

Anyway – I am wondering…. Is it possible to create a “practice blog”? Here’s the idea: I would have about 15 librarians in a group and they could all use a “practice blog” to try out writing and saving a post, downloading a picture and adding it to a post, creating categories for articles and then writing and submitting short articles, sending a comment, etc. All “hands on” kind of things that they could try out to get the feel of the process and demystify the whole thing. I don’t know if it could be done with 1 “practice blog” because that would mean that the blog would have to allow multiple people signed in simultaneously. Perhaps there would have to be multiple practice blogs set up?

I know I could have them go to Blogger or some such, register and practice with that. But it seems as though we would waste a lot of time with people registering, choosing themes etc. when I would like to have folks just “jump into blogging”. I also wonder about creating a lot of blogs that are ultimately abandoned in cyberspace. But then I guess that is not really something I should be concerned about. I guess it is up to Blogger et. al. to clean out unused blogs every so often. And if the workshop is really successful – all those practice blogs will become fully-functioning parts of the blogosphere. Right? 🙂

Another problem, errr “challenge”…..the content filter in use throughout this area of the state blocks virtually every blog site you can name – including Edublogs. As far as I know, Alan November’s site is the only one the filter doesn’t block. And I have heard that they might not be giving out space for anymore blogs. Perhaps you can help me identify free blog sites that are generally not filtered. Or perhaps there is some software that can be used to create our own blogs?

I know next to nothing about the tech involved in all this. Can anyone help me out? Write slowly because I don’t understand high level “tech speak” very well….. 😉