1 reason to start blogging and 23 things for the digital professional
I've almost made it through the second week of my EngD and I have so many ideas about my project swimming around in my head that I keep flitting between the topics that I'm trying to gather information on.
A few days ago, during my search of the intranet, I came across a PhD students' online course entitled "23 things for the digital professional".
I was hoping that it would help to make my research more effective, but upon further investigation I found that I would have to sign up to write a blog (which I have never done before) and I thought "What a waste of time - who wants to read about me" then dismissed it until my project supervisor sent the link to me.
So now I'm writing a blog. I don't know if anyone will read it but it's given me a chance to stop and gather my thoughts. Maybe it will continue to do so; after all I'll be here for 4 years.
Jenny Delasalle
Hi Claire,
Welcome to Warwick! Here are some of my views on blogging:
My biggest tip is to re-cycle other stuff that you are writing anyway, such as correspondence in your e-mail or reports on conferences or notes on a paper that you’ve read. Then you can re-cycle your blog and have headings tweeted, and feeds on other websites that you write for!
You can blog for an external audience but also for yourself: you can keep entries private to yourself, and if you tag entries with keywords then you can search your own notes on your blog for things tagged with keywords of relevance to your work.
Enjoy the 23 Things course and trying out these powerful tools!
14 Oct 2011, 16:51
Mark Carrigan
Agree 100% with what Jenny said -> I post all sorts of research related stuff I’d write anyway (abstracts for conferences, sections from e-mails when I have to explain something etc) on my blog. It can become a store house for all the idea, plans, notes you need to articulate and, as Jenny say, it can be a private one if you wish :)
17 Oct 2011, 10:12
Claire White
Thanks for the tips!
I was hoping to add something of my research to the blog but at the moment I just seem to have lots of hand written notes (mainly lists) and a pile of documents to read. I think writing in this forum will help me to put my notes together – but there’s no rush.
I have a few visits coming up so I can blog the reports on them or perhaps it will be an opportunity to make some pretty slides to be added to SlideShare!
20 Oct 2011, 09:19
Mark Carrigan
definitely no rush—i find that process quite useful, though if the notes you want to process/upload get too extensive, it can become a bit overfacing and put you off going near the blog…
23 Oct 2011, 20:34
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