As a blogger, it has been interesting (though somewhat challenging) for me to use blogs as a classroom tool this quarter. After reading through the assigned texts for Tuesday, I felt inspired to take a detour from our little semi-private corner of the blogosphere if only to emphasize (by comparison) just what we have been doing with this forum, what blogs traditionally do, and what directions we want to take not only as teachers introducing our students to blogging as a low-tech, easy-access "baby step" into new media analysis and composition but also as graduate students developing an online community in a blogging classroom.
We will be doing some hands-on work on Tuesday. (Good call, Mel. I’m okay with the basics, but any “live” demos from code-writers would be appreciated.) I have held off discussing “Network Literacy” in my analysis until then. There are some specific things I want us to try in relation to Madeline Yonker’s text.
Well, that’s all I can think of for now.
If you’re ready, go ahead and follow the digital breadcrumbs...
I’ll wait right here until you come back.
Note: Right-click the link above to open it in a new window. This way, there will be no need for you to re-enter the blogosphere when its time to post your comments/questions/concerns/thoughts/rants/prose poems/etc.
We will be doing some hands-on work on Tuesday. (Good call, Mel. I’m okay with the basics, but any “live” demos from code-writers would be appreciated.) I have held off discussing “Network Literacy” in my analysis until then. There are some specific things I want us to try in relation to Madeline Yonker’s text.
Well, that’s all I can think of for now.
If you’re ready, go ahead and follow the digital breadcrumbs...
I’ll wait right here until you come back.
Note: Right-click the link above to open it in a new window. This way, there will be no need for you to re-enter the blogosphere when its time to post your comments/questions/concerns/thoughts/rants/prose poems/etc.
16 comments:
Wow...
I'm actually disheartened I am after this presentation. Very nicely done.
Speaking of the readings, I am taken by the Lowe and Williams article. The comradeship displayed by those students when their peers were sick or injured brings warm feelings. I suspect few would discount that connection certainly enhanced the class dynamic and made the absent students feel like they were not missing out.
The public nature of blogs presents a unique dynamic to academia because it allows anyone accessing the blog to enter into the conversation. I especially like the Blogs in Plain English video. Moreover, especially I think in my case, it allows me to enter when I want; I don't have to be in class or even dressed. I can grab something to munch on or lean back in my chair and think for a few moments. My response is not dictated by the confines (and structure) of a class room. I see this especially in the Lowe and Williams article with the above notation. And Rebecca even does this interaction in her post, "I'll wait right here until you come back."
Based on some insight by the other readings and the post (rather, where the post took me), I think students become more open to discourse because they can respond based on their own learning style. If they are thoughtful and slow to respond, not a problem. For those of us that make quick judgments and respond quickly, so be it. Even those of us that wish to analyze or conduct some more research, we are free to do so.
When I met Charlie Lowe a few years ago at the 4Cs, he asked specifically about my part of a presentation and "my" identity online (since it was a part of the overall presentation). At the famous Bedford/St.Martins bash, we talked for over an hour about several things including one's identity online. Although our discussion was fruitful from an intellectual standpoint, I can't suggest we answered any of the difficult questions about how students identify online, or, even better, if they do.
Blogs provide those technologically challenged (like me) to still feel like I can contribute. Rebecca asked a question about the wiki and blog and the respective difference. The blog clearly feels more focused on "me", whereas the wiki feels as if Todd and I are always collaborating even though we are not online at the same time. The dynamic has been set up that each one of us respond to the posting--as an individual. However with the wiki, each group takes ownership of the work because that is how it was presented to us.
I'm curious how the blog would feel if we felt more like collaborators. What do you think?
Rebecca,
Nice job (I loved the blogger pic)! I really think everyone in our class is presenting their information in very creative ways. Reading the assigned articles and viewing your blog has made me very excited for class tomorrow. Anyway, here are my random thoughts at this point:
Like Craig, I consider myself technologically challenged. In fact, this class has introduced me to the world of blogging (the blogosphere). Before entering this class, I had a very simple notion of what it means to be a blogger. Though I am more interested in blogs that I have ever been before, I still am unable to fully articulate how I might use them in my class - or everyday life. This is why the "Welcome to the Blogosphere," article was very good for me. I love how this article broke down the terminology and explained how we, as instructors, might use them to promote collaborative learning.
To start...Rebecca this is awesome, and I, like rock, am disheartened at my lack of expertise (but at least I already went)...Does anyone else image the pro-wrestler-turned-actor whenever they read Rock's posts?
Unfortunately my hubby's computer sucks and I cannot view the videos you posted. I look forward to watching them quickly before class.
I need to gather my thoughts and come back. I just needed to respond immediately to the post. (What does this say about blogging and interaction? Why did I need to post? Why did I feel it was okay to post unfinished thoughts, even though this is a class assignment?)
Rebecca writes: "Each student's voice remains his or her own (just as the American Dream and Protestant Work Ethic imply they should)." I have the same experience as Rock to the blog vs. the wiki. The wiki feels more collaborative to me, though I still can pick out much of my own voice within it (if such a thing exists). That being said, I enjoyed doing the blog a lot more. Why? I liked having creative control, and felt more freedom to be creative. Could this experience be extended to the wiki? It could be that the nature of the assignment on the wiki had more to do with which I liked better. Okay... now to address the quote I pasted: I am wary of this individual voice concept, and from rebecca's tone, perhaps she is too. Yet, I liked using my "individual voice" in the blog. Am I a hypocrite? How can I enjoy this and yet move away from the conception of my own voice being individually constructed? More to the point, how do we do this for students?
Side note: Did anyone else get hooked reading the mommy blogs, or was that just because I am an ideal audience (having my own six year old)?
I love the sidetracking nature of all the web stuff we're doing. It seems to match my thought patterns. But, is that good?
Rebecca, I notice from my first post that, no, I do not spell check more diligently on the blog. (though I did just respel diligently twice). [I just chose not to respell respel, but commenting on it defeats my choice].
What print genre do I (did I) gravitate toward in my blog post? Apparently at least partially to comic books. I noted in my reflection on the process, though, that the process of writing in such an associate and juxtaposing way felt similar to when I write poetry, in that I felt a lot of freedom to screw with what I wrote, move it around, and blatently steal from others :)
Rebecca asks: "How do you teach responsibility for public discourse and attention to audience when students can publish anonymously and never have to meet their readers face-to-face? " Wouldn't using a blog as a classroom tool help students to realize that there are audiences? Int he classroom, there will be real reactions and repurcussions. But will they extend this realization beyond the classroom? Is it applicable?
I may have more to write later. My last comment is that I really want to know how to do everything that Rebecca did in her post. I loved all the hyperlinks to new posts. I suppose I could figure this out. But I don't know how to make a cool goth spider crawl across the page, and that I really need to know.
Also I want the goth poetry site to take my own sappy prose and turn it into goth poetry. [god, I bet I was an intolerable teenager!].
I want my new pic to show up
It does make you warm and fuzzy, doesn't it, Craig. You realize you have offered yourself up to show-and-tell about the St. Martin's bash and chattin' with Lowe, right? Just a heads-up...but I do really like your point that a blog allows a student to respond at his/her own pace. (I personally like to write out my thoughts and sit on my ideas before I share them...even if they're in the margins of a notebook...) I am also interested in the idea of blog as collaboration or (at least) negotiation to collaboration. What do you think, Todd?
Lydia: you are right to pick up on my wariness about individual voice, and I really enjoy some of the questions you bring up. If it is difficult for us to see our own voices as constructed, then what does that mean for our students? I'm not sure if I'd want to throw the Vielstemmig piece at them. Can anyone think of collaborative works that are student-friendly and celebrate/model collaboration in a helpful way? (Does creating a work like this sound like a much-needed class project?) I also like how you get at the heart of the somewhat tongue-in-cheek question about online audience, Lydia. You write: "Wouldn't using a blog as a classroom tool help students to realize that there are audiences? Int he classroom, there will be real reactions and repurcussions. But will they extend this realization beyond the classroom? Is it applicable?"
I have "issues" negotiating audience and classroom audience. I wonder: does this help or hinder students when, say, given the task to design a website about why recycling isn't cost-effective or write a speech about successful conservation efforts and why people should donate money to their cause? If they see the internet populated with students "just like them," then will they have the urge to reach out to communicate with other audiences? When it is such a part of their lives, do they think it applies to them, as Lydia says, outside the classroom? What does this mean for the kinds of assignments we can/would/should create in order to get students to wade into web-spaces they aren't accustomed to?
(I have to admit that I didn't get sucked in with the mom blogs, but there are quite a few "I am an English PhD student and I am going to jump off a bridge when..." blogs that really make me smile sometimes)
I love the ideas we're thinking about and bringing up so far. I guess it's time for me to mosey over to kitchen counter, pour that first morning cup O'Generic Kroger brand coffee, and wait for more posts. I am also going to try to get that Facebook song out of my head...but we should so listen to it in class anyway because it makes me smile...and because maybe someone has a deep pedagogical question about it...we can go that route as well (either way, we're watching it).
Cheers
What a wonderful (weblike?) post, Rebecca. I really like how you’ve organized your analysis, how it involves me in its composition, how it takes me through its parts when I click on links. And I like the many images you’ve used in the main and subposts to balance the text, which also makes creative use of color and design. RE your question in the Brooks, Nichols, Priebe Blog Squad piece, I seem to gravitate toward the essay in my analysis—that could be due to my inexperience with this genre (it was my first blogpost)—but probably less so in the comments and discussion section where I try(ied) to respond to classmates’ questions and position ideas people posted in conversation with each other (especially my last entry in my own analysis discussion leading). I like the “Blogs in Plain English” post, its discussion on how presentation of the news has changed and its emphasis on blogs bringing the public and the private together, empowering the audience/viewer/listener to respond to the news and in a way, become part of it: one channel I watched the day after the VP debate showed a group of broadcasters/reporters sitting around a table with their computers, monitoring audience response via blogs on the web. Your question on Lowe’s and Williams’s point about blogs as journaling privileging its private diary-like character at the expense of its public potential touches on an important intersection, for me. It seems that I am a more private person than I thought. I hesitate to make public my private ideas, personal experiences, and photos, especially if they include other people who might not want themselves posted on Fbook; I am aware of the positive and negative consequences that such sharing can bring. I guess it’s a boundary issue for me: I like to know people fairly well before I share private stuff, and of course what I would share privately differs from what I would share publicly, and how I would say it, the rhetorical context changes everything, for me. Part of that hesitation is because I know I will be on the job market soon, and I want to be careful how I present myself to prospective employers (I followed the links in The Blog Squad piece to the CHE discussion about the Juan Cole no hire at Yale debate where Glenn Reynolds writes “does Internet fame spell academic doom?” and have followed other stories in recent years about academics being fired for posting something private in a public space). So I am interested in learning how you lock your blog to friends only (you mention this in your Nelson and Fernheimer section, and, btw, the rainbow colored second paragraph is totally groovy). I agree that “blogs are the perfect forum for process-based class activities,” but I hesitate to require students to comment on controversial issues in the news in a public forum because of my own hesitancy . . . I agree that blogging is a good transformative ground to work with, though, for myself and my students before diving headfirst into more interactive and collaborative genres like the wiki.
Rebecca,
That certainly is an amazingly awesome post, or rather, website, hypertext, multi-/new media assemblage. I enjoyed the videos. You know, I remember that first Apple ad. Great ad--incredible hype, but inspiring and scary.
X-lent questions too. I look forward to seeing what you have cooked up for class.
One question I really like is about collaboration: something like, do blogs isolate and how they compare to wikis?
Thinking about our blog, some not very well-formed points occur to me. One thing I have noticed is the overall effect of commenting, how each commentor emphasizes something different across the readings. So, e.g., Rock notes the supportive moves of the students, Lydia the mommy blogs, Todd the nuts and bolts of the "Welcome" article. Others? Because we are such as small "community" no one feels isolated, but this is accomplished by rigging it in advance and insulating us from others. So rouzieblog does not act like other blogs (as presented in the blogging video)--there is no network writ large (as in Yonkers). Yet, I feel that we do achieve some sense of "distributed knowledge" and network literacy. Thoughts?
What blog genre(s) are practicing? What does this remediate (to use a term from Bolter and Grusin's Remediation, referred to fairly frequently in the readings)
And we all get a chance to reflect on rouzieblog. I have made it available for reading to the public, but not for posting. What do you all think of that? Are we a semi-gated community? Look but don't touch? Is anyone else looking? (How do we know if they can't leave a trace?) According to Nelson and Fernheimer, my choice is against the spirit of blogging. What do you see as the pros and cons of open/closed and in-between blogs/course sites?
I am thinking about the comments on the two blogging articles about whether students should ever be required to post anything personal on the web.
One thing you might notice from the readings is that the state of blog/writing research is rather incipient WAY back in '03-04. Even now. It's a good area to investigate. These studies show how difficult it is to design a good study. If you can think about how these might have been improved, you probably can put together a better one . . .
Later . . .
Holy schnikies Rebecca b, great work!
Regarding the question, “Do yuo fnid yuorself trilpe-chekcing posts in uor clsas to maek sure yuo dno't maek a folo of yuorself?”
Yes, I definitely pay very close attention to making a fool of myself in my posts because of the absence of spell check, but nonetheless a typo here and there will not derail an argument or send a writer’s ethos on a flaming descent in the blogosphere. I entertain the notion that the errors, acronyms, abbreviations, and short-hand-ness of blogs actually give writers some credibility by harboring some human-ness in the virtual world. While many rightfully argue the erosion of our language is furthered by informal text and blog entries, they do not account for those who can separate academic writing in English from the mutant bastard child of informal writing in “English” that no one wants to take responsibility for. What is it that makes the informal writing of the blog so attractive? It’s fun, it’s human, and it puts us in an environment where experimentation, mistakes, and therefore progress are nurtured. According to Elbow, obsession with mechanics stifles the natural path of creativity to paper (or screen) as he advocates in his free-writing exercises, and with the blog we have some freedom to take risks more so than with the academic essay or even in-class writing. Have we all had some fun (healing the split between work and play) and taken some risks on our class blog? While N&F claim that “the kind of informal and creative writing that blogs tend to foster may present a challenge in terms of grading,” I feel a good balance between academic and informal blog writing throughout a course can alleviate those concerns and nonetheless, informal blog writing still must have quality content which an instructor can focus on grading.
Also, as a student reflected from “into the blogosphere” about how blog use in class “was a collective effort of everyone,” I must say that is happening in our class too. I feel my blog entries have borrowed a little piece from everyone’s approach and use of form. Examples include Melanie’s use of unconventional format to emphasize reading content and Jules’ use of colored text to draw attention to questions and make the reading more informal and therefore interesting (kudos!). Also, the collective knowledge is exceptionally helpful. It’s like being able to whisper over to another student during class and say, “do you know what the hell is going on?” The only difference is, you can do it at any time and even “listen in” on any other participants of the blog.
Hey I tried to place an image in a comment and that got rejected. So it appears we are limited to the tags below.
Fortunately, one of them, the a tag, allows you to make links, so you can link out from comments.
so, e.g., I can take you to a how to link page in HTML tutorial site.
Try it, you'll like it.
Ahem, there is spell-check for posts.
OK, well since it seems like I posted my comment twice (excuse me) I hope someone can show me how to delete the latter w/o deleting the former--will clicking on the trashcan after the comment do that? (those scary "this will delete forever and cannot be undone" messages paralyze me).
RE: What do you all think of that? Are we a semi-gated community? Look but don't touch? Is anyone else looking? (How do we know if they can't leave a trace?)
I noticed that an outsider commented on our wiki about literacy and that was kind of cool (although it was a vague shout out to changing our trad. notions of literacy), but what about N&F's caution regarding offensive, irrelevant posts by outsiders? I say we are all adults and have likely experienced some kind of sarcastic, irrelevant comments on the web before and moved on, so why close the door to potential collective knowledge? We can always edit out the crap.
Is there spell check for posts on every blog that exists?
"How do you teach responsibility for public discourse and attention to audience when students can publish anonymously and never have to meet their readers face-to-face? "
The idea of online anonymity is something I have always found really interesting. The idea that we are in a class together changes what we think about what we read and write. Those reading my post and comments know a great deal about me before they read, yet in most online spaces, I could pass myself off as, and therefore be, anything I want. How does this change how we write and interact in these spaces? How does it change what we do and don't say, how we treat our audience, our ethos, etc?
I have noticed that most of our blog comments start with compliments to the author of the blog post. I find myself not wanting to compliment because I feel that we are obligated and my compliments seem no longer genuine. This alone suggests that our social/blogging interaction is quite different than if we were strangers—not to mention that I don’t think it’s normal to go around complimenting every blog in town. (Well… good job anyway, Rebecca!) Thanks also for helping me create my own blog today!
I have been persuaded by these articles and your post/site that I should try using blogs in writing classes. From the sounds of class today, it did not seem that anyone has required their students to do blogs. I’m curious, though, about what posting and length requirements would be best suited for informal writing and collaboration. I spoke to Joey Franklin today (who happens to be doing a blogging workshop next Friday at 1 for 791 credit) who has used blogs in several of his classes. He asks his students to post 3-4 times a week on individual blogs and asks them to comment on someone else’s every time they post. Students either post reading responses or discussion questions for class. Joey said that this has been helpful in planning class. Any other ideas about how assigned blogging could work?
As we discussed today, N&F wrote that blogs can be useful for collaborative work but should not replace discussion forums. However, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between our class blog and a discussion forum. Using a wiki seems most obviously the most collaborative, but I admit that the wiki freaked me out. I did not feel comfortable changing anyone’s writing (probably because I know ya’ll), and I was nervous to put forth my own uneducated definition of literacy. Perhaps in the undergraduate classroom, it would be best to assign each member a role in the collaboration (yes, I mean, reporter, writer, etc.).
RE: our gated community. Let’s open up the gates. What’s the worst that could happen? Couldn’t we always draw the gates if we are bombarded with disturbances and vulgarities? However, if I require my students to keep blogs, should they be kept semi-private? Could they result in something like a facebook wall?
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