Week 1 - Blogging & DITA

Daunting. Week 1 as a mature student, looking forward to the challenge and here goes with the first session, learning all about DITA and how to use a blog to record progress!

Digital technologies, or computers don't deal with analogue words or pictures/images, they need numeric information to translate and interpret so it needs to be digitally converted.

Information as a concept has many meanings, (Wikipedia). It's readily available and accessible in various formats and devices.

The technologies are the systems and machines that process and manipulate the information.

Architecture describes the way in which information is organized. How it is collected, organised and displayed impacts on the way it is used. Rosenfeld and Morville, 2002 say that 'fine informtion architecture results in good digital information solutions that work well'.

Using a blog to record weekly activity has been a great way to learn the tool. They are generally intuative, easy to orgnanise and present information.

Content in a blog is usually displayed in reverse chronological order with the latest entry or post appearing on the front page providing permanent links to previous posts. Originally used as online diaries and pointing users to other sites via links, blogs have now extended into individuals or groups using them as a mechanism for delivering news, providing niche or micro-journalism, or as a means of broadcasting information eg. from a live event. Even used to extend the reach of one’s CV or advert.

Information can be disseminated in various ways, by providing links through to other blogs ‘blogroll’, by syndication or using trackback. Content delivered on a blog can often be short and precise with little or no pre-amble delivered on a regular basis, others are longer in length and updated less frequently.

Lastly, somewhat frustrating copying from blog to PDF but think I got there in the end. Using UNIX and FTP has also been interesting!!