Blog for the Dole
Blog for the Dole is a digital story which tells of an innovative approach to the Work for the Dole program supervised by Rupert Owen, a program coordinator at Kangan Batman Technical and Further Education (TAFE) college in Victoria, Australia.
Jobseekers participating in the Work for the Dole scheme (Andonis Georgopoulos, Tony Auld, Ahmet Bulla and others) created this Slidecast to communicate their views on the program they are completing, which involves blogging. In so doing, the participants have applied their skills in blogging, creating digital stories and sound files - voice and music (clever!) - using social software and new media.
Rupert draws program participants’ blogs together at The Super Viser - a central blog and Jobseekers source their articles from community websites through their wiki hub.
Work for the Dole is a work experience based activity for Australians currently seeking work and claiming unemployment benefits. It involves improving Jobseeker skills by providing training and practical project work alongside involvement with community organisations.
Select to download/view the print versions (Word (37kb), PDF (19kb)
or read on…
Andonis: Um, what were my expectations? Look, to be honest I just wanted to know how and why people blog and look, during the first week, it was amazing because I actually managed to create my own blog and that’s a good feeling and it was a lot of fun in the process.
Rupert: Yep,…um… just quickly did you… um…. when you started it… I mean you had no idea what blogging was, did you?
Andonis: No, no
Rupert: But you know what a website was ….as far as…….
Andonis: I did, and look I was aware of blogs. It’s coming into the mainstream landscape now so look it’s been good now I’ve been part of that and I can see the advantage of it and it’s not hard to do.
Rupert: Now that you’ve spent a lot of work blogging, you have created your blog, you know how to link, you know how to burn your feeds, you know how to…
Andonis: Contact people
Rupert: …contact people, network, …um..do you feel that you actually leave this program like you’ve achieved something? Is that, do you think that’s an overall feeling?
Andonis: Absolutely, absolutely…
Rupert: So it hasn’t been a waste of time for you?
Andonis: No way. Look, I thought that my Work for the Dole experience was going to be a waste of time but I was wrong. Um, this has been really rewarding. It may sound silly but just being able to design something for my…a nice banner or graphic for my web site, that put a big smile on my face. It does, it does make you feel really good and I look forward to continuing with my blog and building upon what I’ve learnt from here.
Rupert: OK, so now that the program is coming to a completion how has blogging affected your outlook on your goals and your future objectives?
Elizabeth: Now that I know that it’s a part of the workplace environment in a lot of places, I um…I’ve sort of…I’ve incorporated that into my thinking , every time I apply for a job, you know because I like publishing and that sort of stuff, that’s where I’m looking, I sort of realise now that it’s not just hard copy editing and stuff that I have to be looking at, you know, like I’ve just expanded my horizons really and my thinking to including online publishing
Rupert: Yep, yep.
Rupert: How has blogging affected your outlook on your goals and your future objectives, where you want to go here, what you want to do?
Tony: Well it’s probably helped more than I have realised really. It’s probably helped me focus more on an actual outcome of all the different skills and knowledge that I have from diverse areas and instead of focusing on possibly getting an outlet physically in the street, I can now have an outlet which has a window in every country on the world and um yeah ‘cos I’ll be linking that to my presence in an online virtual world and where I have a staff member for my online shop, it’s probably really, well basically, helped focus my ideas more on where I should be heading
Rupert: Yep
Tony: I guess (laughs).
Rupert: Are you able to name some definite skills that you’ve obtained when you began blogging. It might not be literal but um you know thought processes and that kind of thing?
Elizabeth: Yeah, just where to start really, how to build a blog and how to access the tools I need to build a blog and also how to access the community.
Rupert: Yep, um what about with um just tag on generally with that, um were you aware of the networking going on?
Elizabeth: No I wasn’t aware that is was as big as it is.
Rupert: Yep, yep
Rupert: Your future goals…
Andonis: Well Rupert you’re spot on. I…it’s not like I was confused maybe it was more of a case of having too many ideas in my head and not really knowing how to channel all of that into one path and I really think that blogging, especially, has been able to focus all my passion and I like, I’ve always liked, the World Wide Web audience and now that I’m on it, it’s exciting. I can see the potential and the possibilities of it and look, I forecast and I know that’s your favourite word, but I forecast that everyone will have a blog.
Rupert: Hmm
Andonis: Everyone will have a blog and um it’s not the future, it’s today. It is happening today and it’s great to be at the ground level now ‘cos it’s going to explode.
Rupert: Alright
Rupert: Um I’d just like to ask you, um do you think that as a Work for the Dole program that blogging has a lot of perhaps positive potential for people?
Tony: I… yeah I’d say definitely ‘cos um, well a lot of people don’t even have a computer at home ah… wouldn’t even don’t even have an email address let alone a blog so to set up a blog you need an email address, so that as well as giving people the basic skills that anybody needs for any sort of job, these days you need an email address as you know to send an application, so it’s been a great benefit to um… having blogs and really, you might just say building blogs but building a blog is also just getting used to the Internet and online media and using a computer…so it’s probably had more benefits then any of the other programs I’ve been in.
