Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Hi all.
Teeny tiny update on my end: I'm teaching at NDSCS now (45 miles south of NDSU in Wahpeton, ND) full-time, and I haven't used blogs during my first year here... I think I wanted to ease into the new atmosphere with as little problems as possible (I didn't know if students here used technology a lot or if they even had a lot of computer labs, etc) and now I feel comfortable enough to use blogs. So, TA-DA, I will in an online LITERATURE classroom this fall (World Lit 240).
As for blogging, I have kept up with my personal blog and teaching blog (both found on Xanga, and I only give out the teaching one: www.xanga.com/teacher47) the most... friends and family (people who I have somewhat introduced to blogs) have gotten me onto MySpace, BeBo, and some MSN blog type thing. I always return to Xanga simply because a) I have a "history" with those spaces (been blogging on those blogs since '02 I think), b) the format works well for me (I can use HTML if I want to, but I don't have to... they still don't have the same interface, however, for Macs as they do non-Macs), and c) I know, to a point, who my audience is on those blogs or lack thereof... (many more people check out MySpace and MSN... and BeBo is relatively private = more for my siblings and I to share photos with close friends, etc.).
What I would like to do is go back to my class blogs (I think I have at least 4 semesters worth?) and analyze them the same way I did the BisonBlog (when it was alive and running - damn hackers). I also am excited to see how blogs affect the literature classroom since I have only used them in composition courses, and I may use any outcome from that course to present at a conference next year...
Recently, I attended the Southwest Texas PCA/ACA conference, and a few of the sessions on blogging had "old" material in my opinion. Many people/teachers/grad students are still just beginning to use them in their research (as academic blogs or K-Logs) or in their classrooms. Some had things to say about the future of blogging, but I wonder what they do for students? I think they will always be around, so how can we use blogs to their full potential? And while one grad student was trying to define the "perfect blog pedagogy," I simply want to figure out all the possibilities of using them. Just like with the separate pedagogies I was taught (expressivism, social epistemic, etc), I am certain that a blog pedagogy can look many different ways and merge with other pedagogies too... Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself since many critics will say: "Wait, blogs are full of crappy writing," but I'd like to use my thesis and the outcome of my class blog analysis to prove more people incorrect. [Ooooh I would also, someday, like to analyze IM in comparison/contrast to blogs.]
Okay. Back to grading. [Peace out from NDSCS.]
Teeny tiny update on my end: I'm teaching at NDSCS now (45 miles south of NDSU in Wahpeton, ND) full-time, and I haven't used blogs during my first year here... I think I wanted to ease into the new atmosphere with as little problems as possible (I didn't know if students here used technology a lot or if they even had a lot of computer labs, etc) and now I feel comfortable enough to use blogs. So, TA-DA, I will in an online LITERATURE classroom this fall (World Lit 240).
As for blogging, I have kept up with my personal blog and teaching blog (both found on Xanga, and I only give out the teaching one: www.xanga.com/teacher47) the most... friends and family (people who I have somewhat introduced to blogs) have gotten me onto MySpace, BeBo, and some MSN blog type thing. I always return to Xanga simply because a) I have a "history" with those spaces (been blogging on those blogs since '02 I think), b) the format works well for me (I can use HTML if I want to, but I don't have to... they still don't have the same interface, however, for Macs as they do non-Macs), and c) I know, to a point, who my audience is on those blogs or lack thereof... (many more people check out MySpace and MSN... and BeBo is relatively private = more for my siblings and I to share photos with close friends, etc.).
What I would like to do is go back to my class blogs (I think I have at least 4 semesters worth?) and analyze them the same way I did the BisonBlog (when it was alive and running - damn hackers). I also am excited to see how blogs affect the literature classroom since I have only used them in composition courses, and I may use any outcome from that course to present at a conference next year...
Recently, I attended the Southwest Texas PCA/ACA conference, and a few of the sessions on blogging had "old" material in my opinion. Many people/teachers/grad students are still just beginning to use them in their research (as academic blogs or K-Logs) or in their classrooms. Some had things to say about the future of blogging, but I wonder what they do for students? I think they will always be around, so how can we use blogs to their full potential? And while one grad student was trying to define the "perfect blog pedagogy," I simply want to figure out all the possibilities of using them. Just like with the separate pedagogies I was taught (expressivism, social epistemic, etc), I am certain that a blog pedagogy can look many different ways and merge with other pedagogies too... Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself since many critics will say: "Wait, blogs are full of crappy writing," but I'd like to use my thesis and the outcome of my class blog analysis to prove more people incorrect. [Ooooh I would also, someday, like to analyze IM in comparison/contrast to blogs.]
Okay. Back to grading. [Peace out from NDSCS.]
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