{"id":283,"date":"2011-03-13T11:09:41","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T11:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/?p=283"},"modified":"2025-01-30T07:42:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T07:42:23","slug":"the-future-of-imperial-science-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/2011\/03\/13\/the-future-of-imperial-science-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of Imperial Science Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday I witnessed the future of Science Blogging at Imperial College<\/a>, when I ran a Science Blogging Workshop<\/a> for Graduate Students. I have blogged before<\/a> about Imperial College Graduate Schools<\/a>‘ Transferable Skills Training Programme<\/a>. The Graduate Schools offer a range of courses, so I was surprised that there was not a course on Science Blogging already on the programme. The Graduate Schools issued a call for proposals for new courses:<\/p>\n

\"A

A call for proposals<\/p><\/div>\n

I recruited<\/a> some of the best<\/a> bloggers<\/a> in the business<\/a> and put my idea forward.<\/p>\n

To my surprise, the proposal was accepted, and my course duly added to the calender<\/a>. We did not know how much blogging experience our students would have, so we decided to keep the workshop general and centre<\/a> it loosly around the why, what, who and how of science blogging.<\/p>\n

\"What

We started with the basics.<\/p><\/div>\n

It seemed important to me to make the workshop interactive. My first idea was to have the students draft a post, perhaps publishing the best one, but it was Dr B O’H of Helsinki<\/del> Frankfurt<\/a> [corrected 14\/3\/2010] who suggested that we have the students blog during the session. Fearful as I was of a Zukenberg moment<\/a>, I agreed, and cast around for a starting point – what should the students blog about? They would not have long to write the post, maybe half an hour or so.<\/p>\n

It was actually on the Guardian<\/a> website that I first saw the winning images from the Wellcome Trust Image Awards<\/a>. Other bloggers have used these images not<\/a> far<\/a> from here. There are twenty-one images and we had twenty registrants. Perfect, I thought, one for me<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What we covered in the workshop is described here<\/a>, and my slides on why graduate students should blog are at the bottom of this post<\/a>. After I and Jenny had spoken about why and how to blog respectively, it was time for out students to have a go<\/a>. We assigned each student an image from the Wellcome Trust Image Awards<\/a> winners and gave them half an hour. After a couple of hiccups with the wi-fi and wordpress accounts, we were up and blogging. Appropriately fuelled by coffee and biscuits, the student bloggers got to work.<\/p>\n

\"Bloggers

Bloggers hard at work<\/p><\/div>\n

We seasoned bloggers (Occam’s typers?) answered questions and helped students to insert links and of course the eye-catching images. As the half an hour mark came and went, one by one the students hit “publish” – for most of the workshop attendees this was their very first blog post.<\/p>\n

\"At

At least when I publish posts on this blog, they don<\/p><\/div>\n

You can see their posts on the website<\/a>. I have a couple of favourites – Don’t forget the mosquito repellent<\/a> (in part because this image is my favourite among the Wellcome Image Awards winners*) and The future made flesh<\/a> because the blogger put the image in a broader context.<\/p>\n

We continued the workshop with Stephen explaining blogging from his perspective – that of a Professor and lab head.<\/p>\n

\"Stephen

Stephen considers the pros of blogging<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard covered the technical aspects – should you host your blog yourself or get your blogging friend to do it<\/del> host it at wordpress<\/a> or blogger<\/a>? We discussed handling commenters and spam and how to customise and promote your blog.<\/p>\n

As we drew to a close, the students posed interesting questions and raised concerns many of us have, about online identity and about finding sufficient material to write about. We encouraged them to make a start at blogging. You never know where it might take you.<\/p>\n

This post comes with special thanks: to Richard<\/a> (who took the pictures), Stephen<\/a> (who formally supported the workshop proposal) and to Jenny<\/a>, all three of whom gave their time and support to the workshop; to the Graduate Schools<\/a> for facilitating the workshop, and the Wellcome Trust Image Collection<\/a> for permission to use the winning images from the Wellcome Image Awards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*The genus of the mosquito is Cule<\/strong>x. Geddit?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday I witnessed the future of Science Blogging at Imperial College, when I ran a Science Blogging Workshop for Graduate Students. I have blogged before about Imperial College Graduate Schools‘ Transferable Skills Training Programme. The Graduate Schools offer a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,4],"tags":[13,15,14],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging-the-phd","category-meta","tag-blogging","tag-science-blogging","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3101,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/3101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}