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

 
Let me see if I can attend to some of the comments posted below. Here's how I see blogs and MOO/MUD spaces differing -- first of all, MOOs can be both synchronous/asynchronous, whereas a blog is only asynchronous. MOOs also offer the possibility to build rooms and objects and thus alter the cyberspace structure. Blogs remain more of a static multimedia. That is, I can't pick up this posting and take it with me to another blog and drop it there for others to read, as I could with a note created in a MOO. Both mediums require a presentation of one's self through text and writing (both mediums, if the MOO has a graphical user interface -- and the majority these days do -- also allow for multimedia - photos, movies, sound) but the text and writing in a blog seems more transparent or immediate. How to explain this? In other words, the creativity that users employ in creating objects and rooms, and in moving around and communicating in a MOO allows for a playfulness that seems to be less evident in blogs -- umm, that is, language on blogs is perhaps more immediately tied to the purpose of writing on the blog, whereas language in a MOO seems to be more tied to creating the cyberspace. Help me here, people! Any thoughts? So that even though blogs might be multiply authored, because the communication is asynchronous, there is more emphasis on the individual user/writer. MOOs only exist because there is a community of users. A blog that someone writes can exist whether or not anyone reads it.





posted by Sandra at 2:53 PM

 
I have an avocado and a mango that need to be eaten by tomorrow, and I'm wondering if there's such a thing as avocado-mango salad. I imagine green and orange chunks in a white bowl - aesthetically pleasing, perhaps, and the taste could be pretty horrific or deliciously surprising. I suspect that trying to use blogs in my classes in the fall might be something like avocado-mango salad -- new and unexpected with the possibility of turning into pulpy mash or crisp explosions of creative fireworks. Mebbe somethin' in between, eh?

This is my first post here and I'm glad to be part of this group. Yesterday was my last teaching day until this fall, and today I helped with the 101 common final exam holistic grading. I'll get final grades done next week, and then I plan to devote more time to blogging and reading blogs. For the month of June, I'll be a participant in our Writing Project, and I'd like to get folks there blogging also. The AAMU Writing Project recently got its national funding back, so we've got a summer invitational institute. A few of us in the department formed a writing-study group and we met at the public library once a month to discuss articles on writing pedagogy. I just submitted a paper proposal called "Blogging, Bedouins, and Women in Black: A Matrix of Writing Activism," for a panel for the Rhetoric Society of America. So I'm looking forward to some intensive blog research. Mebbe we could develop a collective bibliography on theories and practices of blogging? I'm tired and fixin' to go get some dinner and maybe even go to bed early, but I wanted to write here and introduce myself somewhat. Here are some web niches that hold some of my institutional autobiography, as Richard Miller calls it:

• 
  Home Page at University of Maryland, Baltimore County - includes web pages from teaching at University of Arizona


• current departmental website that I maintain


• current faculty website


• Twice Told, or Two Old Ladies Blogging for Peace - my blog for researching the RSA paper and for peace/writing/gender activism


• Guided Floundering - a piece I wrote on my alternative undergraduate experience

That's enough for now. I'm going to go see about some avocado mango salad.







posted by Sandra at 3:46 PM

 
Update on Me
I've been out of commission for a week picking up the odds and ends of the semester, going out and socializing a bit, and trying to quell an illness of some kind--have been very very tired, achy, icky. Burn-out maybe? I still have some grading to do over the weekend and then I'll be done. In the meantime, I worked today cleaning houses and since my original employment gig teaching pre-college classes at Emory tanked, cleaning houses will be my bread and butter. For some reason, this menial work is rather comforting. And Johnny, who I'll be working for, is pretty fun and laidback. And I get to see how people live, where they live, and how they furnish, and that's been one of my keenest private hobbies over the years when I've been privy to strangers' homes.
posted by Doreen at 3:17 PM

 
Thought you all might be interested in this blog post by Adrian Miles. It grows out of an interesting discussion about blogging and "authenticity" that took some pretty bizarre turns. Follow the link back to Jill Walker's log for the starting point for the discussion. I like his (?) claims about the "genre" of blogging, and the discussions of identity throughout this string has been interesting.
posted by chutry at 7:26 PM