I’ve recently been invited by the Centre for Lifelong Learning in Newcastle upon Tyne to teach a 10 week blogging course. Over the 10 weeks I’ll be taking the group through the fundamentals of blogging with WordPress, including
- choosing a topic
- registering a domain
- setting up a self-hosted WordPress installation
- generating content
- building web traffic
- monetization
and more.
When is it?
It’s every Wednesday between 6pm and 8pm, starting 14th January 2009, and is aimed at beginners, so whether you’ve just started blogging, or have been wondering what all the fuss is about, this is for you. It’s going to be very hands-on, and numbers are limited, so register early to avoid disappointment!
There are a few different ways to sign up:
- by telephone – 0191 515 2800 (office hours)
- in person or by post (I know, I know) at:
Centre for Lifelong Learning
2nd Floor, Bedson Building
Kings Road
Newcastle University Campus
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU - or you can pre-register online
How much is it?
The full course fee is £72.00; fees are discounted to £57.00 if you’re retired, and £33.00 if you’re a student or on Income Support. There’s also an extra £5 charge for domain registration.
Where is it?
Here’s the location:
View Larger Map
I hope to see you there!
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So this is an “in person” course, like they will be sitting in a classroom?
I hope you’re not planning to spend 2 hours on showing how to register a domain? *LOL*
Jokes aside I think it is a great idea and I truly hope that there will be a lot of newbies attending. I think that people are generally scared of making their own websites and that is a shame when it is as easy as blogging is these days.
Dennis: that’s correct, although more of a lab – it’s going to be very hands-on.
Agolf: I hope not! But it’ll depend on the students – we’ll try to go at a pace that suits everyone. Two hours actually isn’t very long though – it flies past!
Very cool. There is plenty of need for a class of this sort. Id attend but its a tad bit too far for me. Maybe Ill take a rain check.
Sounds awesome, I will have to see if I can make it! Thanks,
Do you know any such courses in USA ? or do you have any online versions ?Thanks in anticipation.
LED: Sorry, I don’t know of any specific classes in the US – try searching your local press, or location-specific forums.
In the class I’ll be covering a lot of the same sort of stuff I write about, and will probably write about anything new that arises during the course, so stay tuned!
Sounds interesting! If it had been last year I’d have loved to attend…
That really is an excellent idea and a really cool way to get people into the blogging mind state. Some of the tasks that are being taught can seem really overwhelming if you have never done it before. It seems like a pretty cool introduction.
This is awesome. Why are you charging them to get this knowledge? Maybe, you can sell your affiliate programs of hosting, domain, etc to them and make the money. Just a suggestion.
Are you planning on recording the session and posting it as a videocast?
Atniz: First of all, the course is hosted via the CLL – they handle the logistics of the venue and course admin, including setting the pricing, not me. I’d also rather be up-front with people about how much it’s going to cost though, rather than facing a potential conflict of interest during the course – being more concerned with getting students to sign up for stuff than give them the unbiased information they need. Also, strangely enough, people often value stuff more if they’ve had to pay for it…
Agolf: no, I hadn’t thought of that – not a bad idea though. But it’s very much an interactive workshop format rather than a “lecture”, so I’m not sure how well it would work.
It is a good idea to have a course on Blogging. I haven’t heard about it yet. I guess one of the challenges is generating good content. Good luck.
Can you give me some idea of how the course time will be split between the first three bullets (choosing a topic, registering a domain
and setting up a self-hosted WordPress installation), and the last three?
Seth: the focus of the course will be very much on generating content and building traffic, networking, commenting, and that sort of thing. We’ll touch on some monetisation options, but won’t have time to go too deep into it, I think. We’ll probably spend a bit of time up front on the factors that affect the choice of a topic, but won’t get too hung up on the technicalities of setting things up – it is an introductory course, after all.
I intend to be quite flexible though and let the students direct what we spend time on. I hope to see you there, but you’d better hurry up and register!
I don’t think Rod will mind me saying that he’s invited me to do a guest session on non-fiction writing style
Fiona
http://www.thecraftywriter.com
No I don’t mind Fiona, because I have! Thanks for the plug, by the way
What a lucky beginners, they have tutorials..
In my times, we were forced to figure it out, by yourself or your buddy.
And good luck beginners..
Some people have the confidence to go it alone, others feel more comfortable with a bit of guidance. Both approaches are valid. If you have a skill, there’s nothing wrong with passing it on. I teach non-fiction writing. No one taught me that, I learnt from experience. Now I pass on that experience to others. I simply teach them what I’ve worked out for myself. If I can give them confidence to go it alone, then I’ve done a good job. That’s what Rod’s doing with this course.
Thanks Fiona, it’s true you can figure out most things by yourself. The difference is the amount of time it takes to become productive, and the mistakes you’ll make along the way – why not benefit from others’ experiences?
Underarm Sweating:
I’m one of Rod students and I’m finding the course very useful. A lot of the recent modules have been about SEO and link building, and the results have been very impressive for my blog and website as a whole (www.kinocreative.co.uk). I’ve been working in web design for years now, and there’s no way I could have learnt all that I have without being on this course.
Yes you can fumble around in the dark picking up WP and then self teaching yourself ways of broadcasting over the blogosphere, but the two hours I’ve spent at the CLL with Rod have taken a lot of the uncertainty out of the learning curve.
“Agolf Cartson
Dec 17th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I hope you’re not planning to spend 2 hours on showing how to register a domain? *LOL*”
Spooky!
Seth: thanks for the endorsement! I’m glad you’ve been finding it useful.
Simon: was it really that bad?
I’m only winding you up mate. I’ve learned loads from the course, didn’t know anything about WordPress before and now I’m building websites with it!
That’s OK Simon. Hats off to you for putting together your own custom theme in week 4 (or whenever it was)! I wish I could claim credit for that!
Well you can claim credit for teaching me the fundementals of WordPress and such bizarre blog specific terms such as trackbacks, pingbacks, blogroll, blog carnival. Put all that in combination with my existing css skillz and I’m invincible!
I believe you have another course coming up…? Highly recommended!
Kindest Regards,
B
I sure do, Bizzywig – starting on 29th April.
Glad you enjoyed the course, and thanks for the vote of confidence!
Can you give us more info about the next course – is it the same or a follow on from the original?
It’ll most likely be a repeat, but as yet I can’t tell you when it starts.