This blog was begun for a course on blogging that I took as part of a graduate program in which I'm enrolled. The end of the course fell just before Christmas--ergo, the month-and-a half-long silence while I waited for my grades. Their arrival has insured that my employer will reimburse the cost of the class. So I will continue using this blog to share some thoughts that someone somewhere may find helpful, funny, or even annoying. I will continue even though my initial experience in the blogging class was less than auspicious.
I had set out early for the first one, and I sat down in the empty classroom, smug in the knowledge that I was the first to arrive. Other students trickled in and began chatting. Suddenly, I realized that they were talking about whether or not they would be expected to actually speak Arabic throughout the whole course.
I looked at my neighbor: "This isn't the blogging course, is it."
"No--sorry! This is Arabic."
"This isn't even _______Hall, is it."
"No--it's _____________."
I gathered my laptop, computer, and my pride, and scuttled out of the room.
When I arrived at the correct place, the room was almost full. I squeezed in around a table too small for the number of students surrounding it. The instructor, a perky woman young enough to be my daughter, was already talking. She has a rather successful blog that focuses on her family, though it also touches on politics, travel, cooking (she has some great recipes!), and in general, how life happens.
Many of the students subsequently dropped the course. We were left with fourteen. As the trees in the quad lost their leaves, and snow began to cover the paths, we wrote--about our lives, about narcissism, about what makes writing funny, understandable, readable, significant. We practiced the craft of blogging—a more journalistic discipline than blogging's more formal antecedent, the personal essay. We also read deeply—Borges, E. B. White, Woolf, Dillard, and Vidal. We listened to technology gurus and legal experts. And we began to glimpse each others' hearts—the lovely Chinese woman whose childhood as a "lost girl" broke my heart, and whose artistry is exquisite; the military wife with edgy comments and a Texas drawl; the young man, the only one in the class, whose wry comments and slow grin made me smile.
My classmates were all younger than I, all at different life points and experience. However, as we wrote and tentatively began to allow the others to read our words, we began to relax, to laugh. Our instructor's warmth and wit shaped our discussions, and as a result, our writing was sharpened.
The class ended with a series of workshops where we read and reviewed each others’ blogs. Since I am a grammar Nazi, I knew that the structure of what I wrote would not be questioned, but the critique of the length and vocabulary was a humbling reminder of both my age and my profession (when I tell people that I am an English teacher, they tell me their horrific “English teacher stories").
So perhaps no one else will read what I write—or perhaps many will. Let me know if I have “made the grade” for you!
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, September 4, 2009
To Blog or not to blog—a Blogospective
In the first graduate course I took in educational technology, I began my own blog and linked a podcast to it that I had developed on the subject of podcasting. After the first posting, and waiting in vain for someone to comment on my pitiful start, I abandoned it to the great cemetery of cyberspace.
Since then, I have been fairly reluctant to participate in the “fire hose” of “talk ,” as Bob Walsh describes the blogosphere in his blogging handbook, Clear Blogging (4). I did not understand a blog’s value as a discussion tool, and underestimated its value as a network between people who would otherwise be invisible to each other (though I have also been known to read a blog or two when someone brings it to my attention as noteworthy, and I faithfully follow the blog of a young friend of mine, Becca Taylor, who is a pediatric nurse on a Mercy Ship). However, the “fire hose” for me seemed more like Niagara Falls. Being rather anally organized, I could not see how the gargantuan amount of information available, the glut of opinion and chatter could be organized into any usable and useful form.
Thus, when I read Walsh’s comment about profiting from the blogosphere on my own terms, I had a minor epiphany: “It’s not that it’s evil, devouring, or malevolent—quite the contrary. The problem is the blogosphere is a growing, engaging, whirlwind of information and opinion, and it is much too easy to find yourself sucked in, spun around, and overwhelmed” (16), or, in my case, in a barrel headed toward the edge of the falls. Using “Google blog search,” I began to look tentatively for blogs written by people with whom I would actually comment and interact.
I found Liz Davis’s blog The Power of Educational Technology. Liz is the Ed Tech Director at the Belmont Hill School, which, like my school, is in the New England Independent School Association. She writes a blog directed specifically for teachers, and shares her experience and expertise in the area of incorporating technology within the classroom. One of her top posts included 10 tips for teaching technology to teachers. She states: “It isn't really about the tool it is about how you use it: It isn't the word processing software, it's the skills and usefulness of word processing. It isn't the presentation software, it's how to create a meaningful and effective presentation.” Her blog is professional and invites networking. She also has some great resources, including a section entitled “Two for Tuesday” where she lists two favorite tools and how to use them.
Another area of particular interest is Alzheimer’s since both of my parents are suffering from that disease. Susan Berg’s Dementia Views You Can Use is replete with helpful suggestions and links to resources. Berg is a dementia expert, and her blog is full of links to solid resources such as activities and information about being a caregiver. Neither Davis nor Berg represents the large media writers deemed “the experts.” Rather, they are both simply women with expertise in their professions, and a willingness to share their knowledge with their readers.
I now understand the blogosphere as “hundreds of thousands of online communities differentiated by interest” (16), which is a far more manageable way of organizing its enormity of information. Thus, instead of rolling off of Niagara Falls, I can sit safely on its river banks, enjoying getting my feet wet with no fear of mortal danger. I can even offer my own experience as a teacher and mother, through my own blog and comment on others as a way of mentoring and joining communities bound by interest, profession, or personal life points.
Since then, I have been fairly reluctant to participate in the “fire hose” of “talk ,” as Bob Walsh describes the blogosphere in his blogging handbook, Clear Blogging (4). I did not understand a blog’s value as a discussion tool, and underestimated its value as a network between people who would otherwise be invisible to each other (though I have also been known to read a blog or two when someone brings it to my attention as noteworthy, and I faithfully follow the blog of a young friend of mine, Becca Taylor, who is a pediatric nurse on a Mercy Ship). However, the “fire hose” for me seemed more like Niagara Falls. Being rather anally organized, I could not see how the gargantuan amount of information available, the glut of opinion and chatter could be organized into any usable and useful form.
Thus, when I read Walsh’s comment about profiting from the blogosphere on my own terms, I had a minor epiphany: “It’s not that it’s evil, devouring, or malevolent—quite the contrary. The problem is the blogosphere is a growing, engaging, whirlwind of information and opinion, and it is much too easy to find yourself sucked in, spun around, and overwhelmed” (16), or, in my case, in a barrel headed toward the edge of the falls. Using “Google blog search,” I began to look tentatively for blogs written by people with whom I would actually comment and interact.
I found Liz Davis’s blog The Power of Educational Technology. Liz is the Ed Tech Director at the Belmont Hill School, which, like my school, is in the New England Independent School Association. She writes a blog directed specifically for teachers, and shares her experience and expertise in the area of incorporating technology within the classroom. One of her top posts included 10 tips for teaching technology to teachers. She states: “It isn't really about the tool it is about how you use it: It isn't the word processing software, it's the skills and usefulness of word processing. It isn't the presentation software, it's how to create a meaningful and effective presentation.” Her blog is professional and invites networking. She also has some great resources, including a section entitled “Two for Tuesday” where she lists two favorite tools and how to use them.
Another area of particular interest is Alzheimer’s since both of my parents are suffering from that disease. Susan Berg’s Dementia Views You Can Use is replete with helpful suggestions and links to resources. Berg is a dementia expert, and her blog is full of links to solid resources such as activities and information about being a caregiver. Neither Davis nor Berg represents the large media writers deemed “the experts.” Rather, they are both simply women with expertise in their professions, and a willingness to share their knowledge with their readers.
I now understand the blogosphere as “hundreds of thousands of online communities differentiated by interest” (16), which is a far more manageable way of organizing its enormity of information. Thus, instead of rolling off of Niagara Falls, I can sit safely on its river banks, enjoying getting my feet wet with no fear of mortal danger. I can even offer my own experience as a teacher and mother, through my own blog and comment on others as a way of mentoring and joining communities bound by interest, profession, or personal life points.
