Two classmates are out of the country trying to keep up with the classwork. They are finding it very difficult, because they do not have full access to the Internet, and because the first assignment uses a web service that is not active in the country where they are currently residing.
We write in English, because it is the language in which George Brown College expects its students and teachers to work. Some of you did not learn English as a first language. That can make blogging very challenging, especially when spelling is essential to credibility.
Those of you who write English well may still find blogging a challenge, because personality must shine through. That can be terrifying to write so that people recognize your personal voice.
Technical difficulties contribute to the challenges of blogging. I had a power outage in my neighbourhood today. I could not get on to answer your questions.
Timeliness is another important aspect of successful blogging. Keeping a blog up to date can become quite a chore, because your readers come to expect regular posts with new points of view or information.
Please feel free to add any other challenges that you have identified or have experienced, by posting to this thread.
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12 comments:
In my opinion, one of the biggest challenges in blogging is choosing a direction for your blog. If your blog is focused on a subset of a particular topic, this becomes a non-issue, but if your subject matter is more general, it becomes easy for your blog to become disjointed and to lose any sense of cohesion. Oftentimes the personality of the writer is enough to pull the reader through and keep them interested, but in some cases, I have found the opposite to be the case.
Another challenge could be how the program works. Not everyone is computer literate, and may be more time consuming trying to learn how the program works, causing delays in the start up of their blog. You want to make a good first impression. My suggestion to overcome this would be to create a "pretend" blog to help familiarize yourself with the program, that way when you begin the final blog, it should hopefully be smooth sailing.
I also agree with Stefan in deciding which direction to go with. You want to make sure it will appeal to all different demographics, which can be challenging in today's world.
I believe the challenges of blogging is knowing where to start and when to end. Whenever you want to start something, there is always a barrier. There are many decisions to make and it slows down the process. When you are writing, you are publishing your idea and some ideas might become offensive. Sometimes you might have to be responsible for what you say. As a result, blogs can be useful, but only to a certain degree.
i agree with what everyone had said so far. Being familiar with the program is very important because there might be parts to the program that you could have used to enhance your blog. So having a good understanding helps. As for the writing aspect, I agree that it is important to write ideas but also have to consider the viewers too.
A main challange in my opinion is that of distinguishing the writer's tone. Many times you cannot tell the exact conext of the writings. People may feel confused or get offended easily, whether there was direct intent or not.
Not only might the reader feel offended, but blogs can also be used with negative objectives in mind. A company trying to sabotage a competitor or a person complaining about people, places and things they personally don't like. I find many blogs are opinion based and end up being somewhat of an annoying complaint diary.
As lindsay was saying, many people are still computer illiterate or operate on a slower system. I know this assignment took me a a lot longer than most people, simply because of the fact that my computer is so old with little memory left. If this wasn't an assignment, my patience for viewing and creating blogs would have given up a long time ago.
Fianlly, alot of people don't trust material they receive from the internet, unless it is from an encyclopedia or some such website. Blog marketing efforts could be completely wasted, simply because people might feel threatened that their information will be used for negative purposes. Also that they might be taken advantage of, or that the source is not credible.
I find it challenging to know when it is good enough to press SAVE! Sometimes I want to keep it short and sweet and other times maybe I want my blog to be factual and therefore full of information. The difficult part is when is it enough? I could spend all day perfecting exactly what I want to say and the day will be done and it is time to work on the blog for the next day!
When to save?
One significant thing about using the Internet as a communications tool is that is immediate. Think, type, publish! Brochures, for example, can take months to produce.
An example is March of the Penguins. My company sells the only Emperor Penguin expedition available. With our website we were able to tell people about it when the movie came out. Our brochure wasn't ready for months afterward.
The second thing that is important about using the Internet as a tool is that you can change it as quickly as you wish, and as quickly as your coding skills permit.
With Content Management Systems - our blogging software is a form of Content Management System - a lot of the effort of coding is eliminated. Fewer skills are needed.
Prisca
I think I see where Jodi is getting at with her "save" issue where as I also do totally agree with Prisca. For me personally I see the challenge of trying my hardest to give a great response, one that is worth full marks, because even though these are just collections of thoughts: Think, Type & Publish, that I sometimes worry that I forgot to say something that was relevant to the topic. What strategy I adapted to cope with this issue is I will read the post in the morning and think about my response, I will then read it a second time and think about the response a second time, it is not until the end of the day when I see myself "publishing" my posts because this way I know what I am going to type and I had a day to really think about the post and act as my own editor.
One of the challenges I face would be stating something simply and clear. Trying to explain in a way that everyone understands is difficult as everyone has their own writing style and have different interpretations.
I am pleased that so many of you have identified writing and the process of communicating as a major challenge of blogging.
Michelle identified the challenge of understanding tone. Jodi identified how hard it is to know when to save - how difficult it is to know when the job is done. Anna worried about writing clearly.
Tone:
Your choice of vocabulary, and the degree of formality are two ways to set the tone of a piece. For example: "The demographics of the city of Miami engenders a Hispanic flavour to a vacation." could be written "Miami's Cuban community adds Latin spice to any vacation."
When is it finished:
Communicating on the Internet is a fluid activity that truly is never finished. You'll always tweak, especially when you are keeping tourism sites up to date. Restaurants close, chefs change jobs, menus rotate, hotels are refurbished, new business come and go. When your subject is tourism and hospitality, the only thing of which you can be sure is that change is inevitable. Push the save button when what you have to say is accurate and clear.
Clear Writing
If you cannot spell and define a word, don't use it. If you cannot pronounce a word, don't use it. If I could eliminate one word from the English language it would be utilize. Use means exactly the same thing and is less pretentious.
Compare "We utilized the tools at hand to create our blog." to "We used the tools at hand to create our blog."
Today Anna and myself would like to share with the class our challenges with Blogging in Cuba
On-line Challenges in Cuba
by ajmcao & andykim29
After months of endless work and school, it is an excellent idea to take a break in order to be productive both at work and school. A mini-vacation to Cuba with my stepsister and a classmate to Holguin, Cuba was scheduled for September 8 – 15, 2007 during hurricane season. Regardless, we were overwhelmed with excitement; however we had no idea what we got ourselves into. Challenges encountered in Cuba were unexpected. Factors that affected our abilities to complete the remaining assignments from e-marketing class were endless; ranging from inadequate Internet service, communication and lack of updated tool and equipment for Internet access. An additional challenge was that Cuba had restrictions on specific sites that where not allowed to be accessed. However, valuable lessons were also learned from this trip with these challenges.
The night before departure (September 7, 2007), a close classmates was kind enough to inform us that Professor Prisca has recently posted assignments that is due September 9th on Learning Blackboard as it had just started running. Quickly, turned on our computers and tried to figure out what to do. After hours of struggling with what to do, we were back on track. Before ending our work session for the night or early morning, it was confirmed that the resort, Club Amigo, offers Internet services. We were content because we would be able to do our assignments online from Cuba, but we were mistaken.
Shortly after arriving in Holguin, Cuba, the weather changed dramatically from steaming hot to strong winds which was no a surprise as it was hurricane season. As the skies were covered with dark clouds and nothing much to do, we agreed that it would be a great idea to check if the first assignment was marked online. Being the naive people that we were, we thought there would be complimentary internet access. We were wrong as the internet service was priced at 5 Cuban Convertible Pesos for 1 hour which was an equivalent to $5.90 Canadian Dollar. The access to internet was a dial-up connection which was very slow during peak times of the day.
As we stepped into the Internet Cafe, we were pleased to see two old computers. We cornered ourselves with one of the computer to avoid distraction so we can focus on the assignments at hand. Frustration caught up to us as the computer did not turn-on. Confirmed with the Internet Cafe Attendant that only 1 computer was working at the time. Luckily the Café had two computers, we quickly headed our way to our last alternative. As we logged onto the second computer, Anna headed things off first by logging into her personal e-mail account and realized there was a new message from Professor Prisca introducing a new discussion. We were anticipated to answer the questions so we tried to log on to Blogger.com but failed each time. We both tried resetting our passwords and usernames more than 4 times, but no luck it would not let us into the website. Suddenly, we were disconnected from the internet because our set time had expired. We could not believe we used one hour of Internet service and had accomplished nothing. More deposits had to be made for Internet Café in order for us to access the internet. Our second attempt at resetting the password and username was not a success. Luckily, we were able to access our personal email accounts at www.hotmail.com and were able to inform Professor Prisca of our situation. As Professor Prisca quickly replied to our emails, we decided to work around this particular challenge by sending our responses through our personal email to Professor Prisca who was kind enough to accept it and post it online for us. Cuba is definitely deficient with updated tools and equipments for online usage.
The following day, we checked our personal emails and were very grateful for the quick response sent by Professor Prisca from Taiwan. It was confirmed that Blogger only works in North America. This created a huge problem due to the fact that we were in an international region. Since Blogger was not accessible and the flight was not until 5 days later, we were unable to do anything. Professor Prisca suggested creating a blog from http://wordpress.com. As we followed Professor Prisca’s instructions, we had success on signing with Wordpress, however we were unable to process further since we can not post anything. Communication was another problem, everything was in Spanish. We were seeking for IT support to help us change the website to English but no hotel staff was able to help us. Even though the alternative website did not work as planned, we concluded that it was a good familiarity with the real e-marketing world. As e-marketers, we acknowledge that it is crucial to recognize that if your current software is not available, a backdoor is needed and should be always available in any situation. Many people assume that as long as there is Internet service available, you are able to log on to any website on Earth, however this is wrong. Our incident in Cuba has clearly proved our assumptions to be wrong.
Everyday at the resort we would visit the Internet café and waited in line to use the computers. The wait would be long and slow, some days with no electricity or extremely slow connection. We inquired to the hotel staff about another computer within the hotel or nearby, but it was recommended that we should stay in the hotel because a computer was very hard to come by in Cuba. Throughout the 6 full days in Cuba, there were at least 3 days without electricity or connection, meaning that no Internet access was possible due to the weather conditions. In many cases, the storm would knock out the power and technicians were only available during the morning and afternoon.
Nonetheless, with all the factors that created these challenges, this experience has taught us to research the destination thoroughly when doing assignments or business internationally and traveling. Research is very important especially when traveling to third-world countries due to the lack of technology compared to North America. An addition to traveling, when doing personal/business assignments online do not expect same life style and equipment in any country without understanding the region in which you are traveling. Another factor that came to play when traveling to Cuba was the seasonality. It was hurricane season and did knock out the electricity a couple of times in which we had no power for online access. Last but not least, there will always be alternatives online, but access to them might be more difficult depending on the location you’re traveling to. A suggestion is to research the restrictions and limitations of the country being visited so that preparations can be made to adjust the factors affecting work being completed.
In addition to the challenges faced in Cuba dealing with school work, the vacation away from home was worth the time off. We had one amazing experience as we all had a tour around the area and villages. For the first time, we all experienced horse-back riding, jet-skiing and visited a cigar factory. It was one beautiful country that we would love to visit again. A food for thought, Cubans value everyday necessities. So if anyone ever decides to travel to Cuba, bring old clothes, tooth paste/brush, shampoo, and other things that are needed for everyday life.
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