{"id":236,"date":"2008-01-01T10:19:09","date_gmt":"2008-01-01T15:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/2008\/01\/01\/kabt-bioblog-the-beginning\/"},"modified":"2008-02-02T10:39:49","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T15:39:49","slug":"kabt-bioblog-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"KABT Bioblog: The beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The leadership of Kansas Association of Biology Teachers (KABT) meets each winter at my father\u2019s cabin at Kanopolis<\/st1:placename> Lake<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place>. <\/span>It\u2019s quiet, often snowy and centrally located. <\/span>I tag along as host\u2014feeding the birds, deer and KABTer\u2019s and making sure that the facilities are in working order. <\/span>We sit around the woodstove out on our enclosed porch and have a good time talking biology\u2014sometimes we even do some business.
\n<\/o:p>
\nAt last winter\u2019s meeting reports from the newsletter editor and discussions about our web presence led to a long and thoughtful discussion on the nature of professional society communication. <\/span>How do we reach our members, recruit new members and most importantly positively affect biology education in Kansas<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>? <\/span>Obviously with dues around $15 and somewhere between 100 and 200 members we are not going to be financing large PR efforts. <\/span>Like any small organization volunteer work is what makes our organization run. <\/span>I imagine that like most, also, every meeting we all leave with good intentions in our heart to accomplish goals we discussed\u2014and sometimes they are accomplished. <\/span>However, time may even be more limited in today\u2019s teaching environment than ever before. <\/span>We are committed to our profession and our organization but sometimes the challenges are a bit daunting. Some general principles emerged in the discussion. <\/span>Printed and mailed newsletters are nice but expensive and dated (especially if you only put out 4 issues a year). To keep costs down our newsletters are limited in page number and are printed in black and white. Web-based communication offers distinctd advantages. <\/span>Everyone (or nearly every teacher) checks email and the web on daily or even hourly basis. Web based documents can be easily and cheaply enhanced with color photography, video and graphics. <\/span>Our web site was dynamic and run voluntarily but most folks found it difficult to find the time to create web articles for posting and if they did find the time, they still had the hurdle of shipping it to the webmaster for posting. <\/span>Todd C. even volunteered to have his executive assistant post items for us if she could just have access to the site. <\/span>By the way, \u201cdynamic\u201d refers to the structure of the web site. <\/span>After a brief flurry of activity early on the site just seemed to stagnate\u2014a common occurrence. <\/span>Folks gave all kinds of real and valid reasons why they were or were not contributing and helping out the editor and web master but mostly it boils down to time. <\/span>In a small organization most all of the nitty-gritty is going to be done by a very few and they may not feel comfortable doing so much and having so much influence. <\/span><\/o:p><\/p>\n

The year before I had challenged to the board to become active participants on a blog that I had created several years ago\u2014Teaching Biology<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Teaching<\/p>\n

The challenge was to make just one quick post every 2 weeks and build an ever expanding resource for all biology teachers. <\/span>The results were predictable\u2014a couple of posting by some but again no follow through. <\/span>Still, I knew that blogging platforms offer some serious advantages to an organization like KABT. <\/span>They are dynamic and interactive. <\/span>The interactivity is the key\u2014not only can individual board members post articles, easily but anyone viewing the site can write a comment to the postings. <\/span>Blogs are very easy to set-up and maintain compared to a modern web-site. <\/span>Blogs can be set up so that multiple authors or board members can post. <\/span><\/p>\n

The discussion continued to play out; leading me to eventually, as a non-board member make a proposal. <\/span>I didn\u2019t want to give up on the idea of using a blogging platform to host our KABT website. <\/span>I think that the problem with the \u201cTeaching Biology\u201d blog was that most of the posts dealt with ideas and stories\u2014not news or information about biology teaching. <\/span>With that in mind and Todd\u2019s offer considered, I offered to purchase server space to house our website and set up and run the site. <\/span>I again challenged the officers of KABT to get on the site and post ideas, news, introductions, etc. <\/span>The meeting described took place in January. <\/span>By the end of February I had the KABT BioBlog up and running with input from several board members. <\/span>Last fall the site was successfully presented to the membership. <\/span>To date we\u2019ve had postings from several board members, occasional comments and we\u2019ve established connections with former members.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At this fall\u2019s NABT meeting there was quite a bit of interest and the folks at IABT<\/a> have started a similar effort. <\/span>I still have to put up too much of the content, myself but I think things are working well enough now to promote this as an idea for other organizations. <\/span>At NABT, I was asked to consider making a presentation at next year\u2019s meeting about creating an interactive website. <\/span>I don\u2019t want to wait that long so this is the first of a series of articles for NABT affiliates about using blogging platforms as their web presence. <\/span><\/p>\n

BW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The leadership of Kansas Association of Biology Teachers (KABT) meets each winter at my father\u2019s cabin at Kanopolis Lake. It\u2019s quiet, often snowy and centrally located. I tag along as host\u2014feeding the birds, deer and KABTer\u2019s and making sure that the facilities are in working order. We sit around the woodstove out on our enclosed
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kabt-news","category-nabt-news","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}