Work Blog Requirements and Recommendations

The purpose of your work blog

The blog you keep for 3to1 Games has utility in several ways, and is not just empty paperwork for apprentice tracking.

In this program

  • Comunication: This is a primary way of communicating with your supervisor. When they haven’t seen what you’ve worked on, this is your way of showing off!
  • Tracking: This is a way of keeping track of all of your work, of reminding yourself of all you’ve done, as well as letting others see what you are capable of.
  • Assessment: For your apprenticeship we need records of your achievements to justify your performance reviews!

Career

  • College Admission: Admissions for many colleges require some sort of process documentation, often directly requested as ‘Work Process Blog’.
  • Resume: For your own resume a blog can help you nail down transitions, dates, and remind you of accomplishments.

Professional

  • Employers: More and more employers are recognizing, and even requesting evidence of your work process, and this progress blog qualifies perfectly for this role!

Parameters and Requirements for 3to1 Games

  • Blog must be accessible by a link you can share with others. Having a public blog is encouraged, but having it accessible to send when requested is mandatory.
  • Blog must be updated at minimum once per week! Daily is better, and may actually be easier for you to remember and plan for.
  • Updating a blog on work time is fine, just don’t make that your job.
  • Entries should be concise (brief) but contain enough information to clearly show your work for the period of time since your last update.
  • Use visual aids! Add pictures, videos, etc. to illustrate all your wonderful work!
  • A Google Doc is not an acceptable blog. A blog needs to be randomly accessible (A reader needs to be able to choose a date and see your entry).
  • Locked social media is not an acceptable blog. Locked media are media where an account on the site is required to access content for that site. This includes Instagram and Facebook (and all Meta products). Test your blog by sharing the link with others!

Recommendations and examples

In writing an entry for your blog a common mistake is to say something obvious, minimal, or too general like:

‘I learned C++’

Really? You learned all of C++ this week? Be specific. For example:

~'This week I learned about namespaces in C++. I'm not sure I understand all of it, yet, but I think it does...' ...and so forth.

Another common problem is entries that describe too little:

'I worked on the mouse character.'

Fine, but what about the mouse character? Is it done? Then say so! That’s a lot of work...

'I finished the animations for the mouse character. All of them work (see animated GIF above)'

Don’t forget to include any tutorials, reading, or experimentation you’ve done! Skill building is a valid work activity! But give specific examples, and describe your experience with the materials: Good? Bad? Ok, but outdated? How was it?

And one last bit of advice: Make sure your entry reflects what you did. I will be looking to see if the entry describes an amount of work that reflects you staying busy since your last entry.