Donâ??t Call it A Blog!

I started reading РDon̢??t Call it A Blog! at bavatuesdays and got to thinking. (Which is dangerous at times for me particularly on little/no sleep which the son is insuring these days.)

We should be thinking of the tools formerly know as blogs as personal publishing tools because that is what they are it might be for education, profession or person.   By avoiding the blog tag, we are more likely to avoid the eye glazing and snickers of who wants to know about when I woke up and what I had for breakfast.

Snapshot: Personal Electronic Devices Owned by Students

Thanks to Megan@Elon for the link to this Snapshot: Personal Electronic Devices Owned by Students

It is a nice graph of the technology devices that students carry with them.

What was more interesting is that Campus Technology provides the readers (and would be authors) citation information at the end of the article.

I haven’t noticed this on other cites but maybe they also provide this info. Does this mean that hat tips and via links are no longer good enough for bloggers to reference the sources of their thoughts?

Funny Thing About Blogging

The newest post of the 15 Minute Lunch got me thinking that it is funny how reading just a few weeks worth of post can make you feel a connection with someone you never met.

Bittersweet

As I move full-steam ahead with the User Services group I am seeing some fruit of my work with faculty incorporating social software ripening.

For example – FS101: Psychology in the Media a blog and multimedia enhanced course.

Reading the first four posts makes me want to take the course.  Best of luck to Aimee and her class.  I hope they learn a lot and have even more fun.

An inevitable dilemma for bloggers?

I was reading Geeky Mom today where she writes about the tension of integrity of person and online personae. She is not the first blogger that struggled with it. Most likely she won’t be the last. I have similar thoughts from time to time and often worry about encouraging faculty to incorporating such a public platform into their classes.

Perhaps these are just growing pains of a changing paradigm of publishing and personal, professional, political expression. And that the tension that many of us are struggling with (partially) come(s) from the possible judgements one could make about each of us based on one post as opposed to considering the collective work.

What is the proverb about first impressions?

Personally, I hope Geeky Mom finds a position of comfort where she can continue to blog from. Her insights and humor are a pleasure to follow.

Tips For Beginning Bloggers

A class at the college is having all of the students blog about course content and resources for the first five weeks of the class to generate a common understanding and develop the course from the student perspective.  In support of this I developed some ‘words of wisdom’ to help get them thinking as bloggers.
Be Authentic â?? Your blog is your online voice.  Write to express yourself not to impress others or attract an audience.  When you focus on expressing ideas, facts, and concepts that matter to you in your own voice others will pay attention to your blog.

Be Aware â?? The words your write are a public as if you were shouting from the town square but unlike the town square your self-expression can linger for a lifetime or longer.

Give Credit Where Credit is Do â?? Blogging culture is collaborative and social by nature.  Expect that others will quote you and link to your posts and you will do the same.  It is good form to provide links to the authors and posts that inspire your ideas or solicit your reactions.

Just Blog â?? Writers block is a terrible thing, but force yourself to post and you will get through it.  Start small and be persistent.

Grow as You Write â?? Blogs are works in progress.  The key is to post and revise your thoughts through subsequent posts in the end you will have something you can be proud of.  Even if it is not where you thought your thoughts were heading originally.

Solicit Feedback in your Posts â??

For posts that you are trying to â??flesh outâ?? ideas in, consider ending with a few questions to help your readers know the kind of comments that will help you develop your ideas.

Comment on The Blogs You Read â?? The value of blogging lies in the interactions and the ability to revise thoughts and thinking patterns because of those interactions.

What are the other tips that beginning bloggers are given?

What to do now? (Blogging ain’t a Silver Bullet)

So I have been documenting the different LMS tools that the college has been investigating over the past month. Someone, actually it was Jim at Bavatuesdays, found the posts and opened the door for continued discussion of LMS and Angel.

The question now in front of me is do I

• blog more about my thoughts gearing them to him?
• reply in the comment section and trying develop a conversation?
• email him? But then the conversation is closed?
• blog more but keep writing for myself and hope he gets something out of it and provides his perspective? (Cause God knows I have a lot to learn!)

Is there something that combines real time interactions yet archives the exchange?

• perhaps recording a skypecast?
• IM and posting the transcripts?

Others must struggle with these types of interactions. How do they proceed? Or am I over-thinking this?

In the end, it is a good reminder that while blogging provides windows into one’s thinking and experiences it is just one method of communication. It is important to include additional avenues for the author and audience to connect as to avoid many voices talking
without any ears listening. We all have a piece of the puzzle to add.

I think my answer will start as a combination of points two and four…

• reply in the comment section and trying develop a conversation?
• blog more but keep writing for myself and hope he gets something out of it and provides his perspective?

with a little 5 or 6 if necessary.

Ten habits of bloggers that win!

Thanks to Cool Cat Teacher  for this post Ten habits of bloggers that win! and  her additions to today’s skypecast on instructional technology.

The habits are good guides for beginning bloggers.

1. If you mention it hyperlink it.
2. Get a Good Title
3. Write and then cut in half
4. Write and then format
5. Draw a picture
6. Before you bag it tag it
7. After you post it ping it
8. Make sure you set your pages to archive
9. Comment on articles you quote and hyperlink to your article
10. get the stats back.

Blogs as emergent voices

Reading Bryan’s, Infocult blog, again and came across this gem.

Does a short-term blog (a semester) go against the idea of blogs as emergent voices, given how long it takes for the latter to arrive?

This came at a good time as I am working with three others trying to come up with an LMS answer and are looking at the current versions of commercial and open source products. I have been looking at Desire2Learn.  One of the features of D2L is that it contains a blog tool.  Based on the description it appears that this could be a blog for the students college career, which I actually like better than faculty requiring students to create a new blog for every course that they are expected to blog in.

Another parallel project is working with the faculty bloggers to develop blogging aspects of their course.  I floated the idea that there are many ways to skin the cat with blogs, but that the educational power of the blog is the window into student thinking that blogs provide. Bryan’s post makes me want to take it a step further.

The window into the student mind is benefit for the instructor as it allows for better insight to preparedness and readiness for new challenges.  The bigger benefit might be for the student particularly the student who is not alone with his/her thoughts enough. Through blogging students are developing a voice, which is really the student’s expression of self. Writing to a blog tends to be a work in progress and thus a little more free to try different ways to express ideas in word.
By encouraging students early in their college careers to blog their learning experience, are the student more likely to succeed by taking ownership of their learning and transformation from high school student to educated citizen?   I do not know, but if we give the students a tool for reflection and model self-reflective behavior we at least we have set the stage and put ball in their court.  (How are those for cliches?)

Good Blogging Habits?

When next I meet with the Allegheny bloggers I want to cover a few things including creative commons, managing trackbacks and comments, and uploading files/images.  These are all pretty concrete but I also want to cover some good blogging habits so that the faculty model good blogging for their students.   So what are good blogging habits and do I model them? 

Some things that I learned about blogging practices.

• Decided on your reason for blogging and stay true to it.  This does not mean never change but be intentional. 
• Communicate your reason for blogging early on formally and write in a way that reinforces your intentions.
• Blog frequently enough to make the act a habit.
• Subscribe to other blogs (using the blog feed and a news reader) dealing with issues similar to what you post about.  I find blogging helps to clarify ideas.  Reading and responding to similar blogs promotes the exchange of ideas.   Remember blogging is social software. 
• Give credit where credit is do.  When you read and respond to something you found through another blog/site link to that blog to give credit to the source.  Bloggers also judge the value/credibility of your blog by where you are getting your information from as much as the information you provide.  
• When working in a community consider using a unique tag or keyword for your posts to help tie posts meant for the community together by making it easily searchable in technorati.  For example I am using the tag ac-bloggers for posts about working with the bloggers at Allegheny. 
• Be personal.  You do not need to keep an online diary but you do need to care enough to commit to your topic. 
• Be yourself.
• Have fun with it!

I am sure that there are other things, people write books about this stuff, but these are enough for me right now.