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

 
Just a quick note: I've been writing a lot about blogging on my personal blog, the chutry experiment (at it's brand-new, ad-free home) and Doreen suggested that these questions might be relevant to our panel. Hope everyone is having a cool summer. BTW, I kind of like the new interface on Blogger, makes things a little easier to use.
posted by chutry at 11:30 AM

 
Like almost everyone else, I've been thinking about submitting to the CFP on blogging (now that the deadline is fast approaching).

Right now, I'm intrigued by questions about the social and political effects of blogging. Anne Galloway has linked to Adam Greenfield's pessimistic reflection on whether or not IT have made the world a better place. He challenges readers to answer the following questions:

Is the planet as a whole detectably better-off in the wake of a decade of decentralized, low-cost-of-entry information availability? Are we better informed, less superstitious, more open-minded, more curious, stronger, less afraid? Do we make better choices?

My initial response is a slightly ambiguous yes. I'll grant that corporations are getting richer and fatter. I'll admit that the current global tensions have produced an increase in superstition and nationalism. But I do think the grassroots possibilities of IT, including blogs, have at least kept some of our bullies at bay (the "Star Wars Kid" is one example). Even though the FCC voted for deregulation, public outcry has encouraged Congress to consider repealing the FCC's decision. Blogs and online news sources have helped disseminate information that mainstream news sources have either buried or distorted.

This isn't the question I really wanted to address here. I'm still trying to think about the temporal linearity of the blog and how that informs the way we "think through" blogs. It does seem to privilege the ephemeral, the right now, over the eternal, the past. One of the results is the number of political bloggers (of all positions). I know that part of my attraction to the blogosphere was reading Salam Pax and others who were blogging about Iraq. I don't think that all blogs or bloggers privilege immediacy over the long-term (Matt's discussion of the digital archive is one example), but I'm fascinated by the temporal construction of blogs. I'm just not sure where to go with it.
posted by chutry at 11:27 AM

 
Anne Galloway has been asking some interesting questions about using blogs as research tools. Like her, I'm concerned with using my blog for thinking through some of my research (in my case, making the transition from dissertation to book), and I'm trying to work out how blogging might be able to synthesize discrete ideas. Anne points out that

For example, Blogger doesn't offer the ability to organise posts into categories like Movable Type, but even so, that type of archiving does nothing to connect posts across boundaries.

One alternative may be the "search" tool on many MT blogs, which might allow me to track down any entries on a topic, but that still doesn't necssarily allow for the types of connections that I think she is describing and creates other types of limits. I'm also a big fan of the trackback function that might alert me to others' comments on my blog.

I think she's right to suggest (via Ted Nelson)that "we are prisoners of our applications," but I'd like to make a case for the temporal linearity of blogging. I think George put it well when wrote about "writing to the moment" several months ago. I realize that he was writing more about autobiography, but "writing to the moment" (i.e. in a linear medium) can also enable a certain type of thinking that might not be permitted in "writing to a database" (George's narratives about his research in Manchster might be a good example). Certainly blogging allows one to combine both logics to an extent, but I do think that the temporal organization might allow me to see how an idea is developing over time in ways that a database with discrete categories might not. Also by privileging the most recent entries, blogs are useful in emphasizing a blogging researcher's most immediate thoughts. Then again, linearity and discrete posts also produce a segmentation of thinking that is rather artificial.

Given some of these questions, how have other academic bloggers used their blogs for thinking through reesarch ideas? In what ways do you find the temporal linearity of blogs helpful or harmful?
posted by chutry at 11:26 AM

 
After a conversation with S last night, I've been thinking about public/private distinctions within the blogosphere, and it turns out that Adrian Miles and Jenny Weight have been blogging about this topic recently. Jenny Weight comments that she is concerned about using blogs in the classroom because of students' right to privacy. This is certainly a major concern for me, and in the past, I've been hesitant to use blogs or other online discussion forums because I was concerned about a student's comfort level with posting his or her work in public space.

I'm more inclined to share Adrian's perception that "what constitutes private is up to individual definition." I'm certainly intrigued by the idea of using blogs in helping my students to develop their argument skills, specifically their ability to negotiate the various audiences within the blogosphere. I also like the idea that a blog community can be defined as "an emergent semantic or epistemological community." This notion of emergent community summarzies well the main benefit of blogging that I was trying to describe to S last night.

I've used bulletin boards and listservs, such as Web Crossing, in the past, but this is definitely a much more public forum. George offers some useful advice about how to deploy blogs in the classroom, specifically in terms of a Slashdot discussion. Any suggestions on how to negotiate some of these difficulties would be much appreciated.

Cross-posted on my new MT blog: the chutry experiment
posted by chutry at 11:25 AM