this blog will provide those of us interested in theorizing blog use in the classroom with a space to hash out ideas, propose theories, invite readers, and debate their possibilities and limitations

 
Hey -- thanks, Doreen, for admin privileges. i've put up links to class/individual blogs. but as i begin to look at template, i'm thinkin', 'why not move this whole thing over to typepad?' i've got space for lots of blogs and the thing i'd love...which typepad offers...is search capability. each posting can be categorized for several search terms. anyone interested? i can migrate this baby pretty easily....i'll email, too, and see what ya think.
posted by Sandra at 1:03 PM

 
Hey All,
I've given you all administrative powers to do what you will with this blog. Sorry I've been a half-ass admini but this semester is kicking my ass --- and with the diss behind me. It doesn't make sense but I'm going to check in more frequently with my blogging experiences since we just started in my first semester classes a few weeks back. Most students seem quite excited.

Also Chuck and I were interviewed by the Technique about our blogging in writing classes. We'll try and post a URL if you're interested in reading what we/they said.

ciao,

posted by Doreen at 2:49 PM

 
Even though our panel wasn't accpeted, I'm going on the assumption that we may still do a panel in a different setting (or write a collaborative paper). An interesting discussion at Crooked Timber (I'll paste the URL to avoid direct linkage) on privacy and blogging. Apparently course blogs may in fact violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, designed to prevent the publication of student information (enrollment in classes, for example) in public. Because blogs are public mediums, course blogrolls may be technically violating this act.

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000598.html


posted by chutry at 1:04 PM

 
I've had some similar experiences to Sandra: the first problem is that studnets in my class who are "low-end" users have frequently started new blogs for every entry, something I'll have to correct in future semesters. I've also found that students have struggled with adding comments (Blogger, of course, requires going to an outside source and inserting the code into the template). No question I'll use Typepad in the future. I also had similar problems with titles for blogs, especially because Blogger's interface doesn't have a space for entry titles.

I did get some sense of audience due to my links coming up on other bloggers' referrer logs. Rachel Lucas even quoted several of my students in one of her posts about my class. I was somewhat relieved to discover that my students were somewhat amused by our publicity, and one of my students took great pride when I mentioned her in my blog. Many of the links have diappeared from Technorati, so if you go to my blog at chutry.wordherders.net/ and search for "Busted," you'll find the links I was describing.
posted by chutry at 8:20 PM

 
Doreen -- I think you're the only one who can change the template html. Can you put up links to class blogs? I just went to Chuck's eng1101 blog and started reading. I'd really like a list of our teacher-authored blogs for classes and the blogs we use to process the teaching and other stuff. Would like to be able to shuttle back and forth easily; also might be helpful for other readers of this blog to have those links handy. i'll email you the html i'd like for my links, since i can't get the html to show up here as text.:

Dr. Shattuck's blog for Advanced Composition

Spidergrrl's Web - Shattuck's blog

posted by Sandra at 7:23 PM

 
hey y'all...so nice to hear chuck and doreen's voices here. in response to doreen's query, please post to my blog as you will...mebbe a bi-weekly overview. shouldn't take more than 15 minutes. ok, mebbe that's optimistic.

i'm psyched about using blogs in advanced comp. and am learning potfuls...about: how to approach the concept of blogging with low-end users; how to further interrogate my own pedagogical stance/persona; how writing changes, develops when publication is in the mix --- so this whole interweave of writing/publication/readers that Doreen refers to in recent post -- intriguing. i've been emphasizing authentic audience and service learning in the class. so students need to get two outside readers for their individual blogs. i've asked 3 people so far to be my outside readers: Doreen, cuz she knows about this stuff; my friend Julie, feminist rhetorician at Illinois State, cuz she's a great writer and teacher; and Jarrod Patterson, who is a colleague and knows A&M students -- teaches developmental english and first-year. my friend Ana Sisnett, a stellar member of the blogerati (the one who introduced me to the medium) and executive director of austin free-net, is also reading and i'm about to send her an invitation cuz she's already commenting on the blog. Ana is totally rocking with her Typepad blogs. Um, I also love my Typepad blogs. A lot.

yesterday class met in a computer lab in the new engineering building. that's the only time we'll be able to use the lab cuz it's for comp. sci. students, so i need to set up something regular for every thursday class. here's the assignment i passed out:

• If you have not yet set up your blog, do so now. Go to www.blogger.com. You will create a user name and password, then a title and description for your blog, and then a web address. Blogger presents you with a page that has http://|_____________|.blogspot.com and whatever you put in the text entry box becomes your blog address.


• POSTING for TODAY: read my blog at http://eng304classblog.blogspot.com and then post your reactions to your own blog. POSTING for THIS WEEK: write about your revision plans.


• TO POST: remember that to post to your blog, you must first go to www.blogger.com and sign in with your username and password.

Here are the main glitches that popped up: 1) folks confused "blog" with "posting," so that when they accessed their blog account, they clicked on "Create a new blog" instead of clicking on the blog they already created and then posting. [When I realized this during the lab, I stopped and explained that a blog basically meant a separate website. Every time they clicked on "Create a new blog," they were creating another web page.] 2) students often sent me blog addresses that led to "page not found" messages. most of these errors were due to not re-publishing the blog after saving changes. I think I can help with a lot of this stuff with a quick and basic discussion of computer-to-computer talk, why posting and publishing are different. So here's a clear case where writing best proceeds when the technology is fully explained. Also, I make assumptions that my students know stuff they don't yet know. That's due partially to forgetting what it's like to be a new user and partially to not being able to read the huge variants in student techno skill sets. 3) many blog titles end up being not too appropriate mainly cuz of the confusion when the blog is first set up --- differences between blog title, description, username, URL that gets designated. i could have prevented some of this confusion if i had been more familiar with the new blogger interface. earlier interface simply used username as the URL.

I think I'll stop now. I want to go look at Chuck's stuff he posted about. Will try and post more regularly here. With all the blogs i've got going, i'm starting to suffer from a wee case of blogertigo (blogging + vertigo). I'd like to talk more, too, about how blogging with the class affects my pedagogy, writing, teaching persona.

posted by Sandra at 6:37 PM

 
I'll provide more details later about my moment in the blogo-sun, but if you want to follow the basics, go to Technorati and type in the search term "tryon1101." You should get a list of 35-40 sites that have linked to my course blog. Most of the attention has been favorable, and the people who criticze me, well, they just don't get it (joking).

Even though I didn't intend to attract this much attention, I'm beginning to think that it was a positive experience in that it made the concept of audience incredibly concrete (Rachel Lucas, Joanne Jacobs, and others responded to my linking them with with long, well developed posts). Many of the links are from people who are using blogging for educational purposes, but it's interesting to see how many people denigrate a medium in which they are participants.
posted by chutry at 10:09 AM

 
Hi All,
I am slowly returning to the blogosphere but haven't updated my own blog in months, not since sending it {my life} into overdrive on the diss., but now that's all behind me....for now.

Chuck, I'll be interested to see how things turn out with the writers now perusing students' analyses of their articles. However, if nothing else it illustrates beautifully how blogs are perfect conduits/media for getting students to think about audience and rhetorical situation and accountability in terms of their own writing. Also, blogs are "live" which makes the text dynamic, ever-changing, and dialogic. I wonder how students will analyze blog writing in relation to trad. writing forms and other hypertext such as web projects where they have more 'control' in a sense. Anyway, just blabbing here on a steamy Atlanta Labor Day. Ciao!

Sandra, I just joined your blog, I think, and look forward to reading your posts. How often do you want me to post and is there anything that I need to be addressing in particular, or just my random brilliant thoughts? Y'all can read Sandra's class blog also, but I'm a responder.
posted by Doreen at 4:46 PM

 
Another quick note: I've recently had the experience that my course blog had a brief publicity bump after I linked to several prominent "journalistic" blogs as part of an assignment in my English 1101 course. The response has been pretty interesting so far.

Check out the details at http://tryon1101.blogspot.com/ (especially entires around August 28-September 1).
posted by chutry at 1:09 PM