Reasons to blog!

So, why exactly have the 'not so good at technology' education department decided to enter the weird and wonderful world of blogs? Well, from my own point of view, Sarah Dixon (BGCI's invaluable web editor) and I went to a training course by the brilliant Media Trust a couple of weeks ago that opened my eyes to the new communication tool that is 'New Media' - i.e. using blogs, Wikis (as in Wikipedia), Myspace, Podcasts and so on.

The Media Trust is a fab organisation - they are funded by the UK government and their remit is to provide training, expertise and resources to help charities use the media for their own benefit. They run training courses (very reasonably priced and sometimes free!), help locate media experts who will donate their time to work on a charity's particular media project, and will even take news, turn it into a press release and release it to the news feeds journalists use to locate stories. Have a look at their website to find out more.

Anyway, Paul Caplan, one of the tutors on this training day, was telling us about the possibilities of using new media - his point was that it opened the door to a totally different way of working. Rather than websites being places to get information from, a very didactic approach, we can use them to communicate, to create dialogue and conversation with individuals, sharing ideas and experiences in a much more open and democratic way. I'll write up some of the notes he gave us and put them on the website - of course I'll drop a blog in to say where they are. He also has articles available on the ICT Hub about new media and various other IT technologies.

In the meantime, the training session has directly led to this blog. Julia and I are always working on developing new projects and proposals and are always looking for input and ideas from our colleagues and friends - this blog, where anyone can leave a comment and contribute, ill hopefully provide us with a better way of communicating and learning from everyone.

We'll use it to share tidbits we pick up from various places, chat about ideas or suggestions, draw attention to new resources or outputs from BGCI and also to get to know the BGCI education website users a little better. So don't be shy - contribute, comment, get involved, we'd love to hear from you!