This post has less to do with why than it does with how--that is, how I use blogs. Over the years, blogging has been part of my personal writing, academic activities, classroom practices and fundraising efforts. In all cases, I used blogs as my medium because of how easy it was to set one up and start communicating with people.
So here's the line-up:
1. This here blog. This is my home blog, so to speak, and, like a journal, it's the place of rough draft writing. Keeping a blog, where I have an audience, has certainly helped me keep writing, which, obviously, is the first thing a writer needs to do. I've also tried to stay true to its being a first-draft document. While I proofread and spellcheck, and yes, edit a bit, I don't spend a whole lot of time redoing a post. That means that some posts tumble about vaguely in search of meaning, others are clear and crisp and to the point. I suppose that one could argue that if I'm posting my ideas for the whole world to see that I need to make sure that I make complete sense, especially because I teach writing. But, as a writing teacher, I want this to demonstrate a writer's notebook, where there are false starts, repeated ideas, doodles (or my fascination with photo and collage programs) and moments of silliness and moments of seriousness. There are also essays, poems and other ideas waiting to take shape whenever I reread my posts.
I'll address the ideas of audience and my categories in another post. let's move on to the second blog,
Community College English
CCE is a communal blog, and while it is read and sometimes cited in IHE, it's a pretty laid back blog. If it were to take a Quizilla quiz called "What Religious Service Are You Most Like?," the CCE blog would be a quaker meeting, steady and quiet, with occasional members moved to speak. I am always happy to have new folks post on CCE, but I have a feeling that when a blogger already has a blog, it's sometimes hard to find the time and topics to add to another. The writing that I do for CCE is less informal than here, and each year I try to keep the academic stuff there and the personal stuff here. Because my posts are an effort to discuss things with other academics, I've grown more focused and audience conscious over the years.
At any rate, category three of my list are the blogs that I've used for presentations, and which are no longer public. Those would be one that I created for the Middle Atlantic Women's Studies Association's conference a few years ago--(I gave a workshop on how to blog). Another blog would be one that I put together for an in-house workshop on doing genealogical research. Both of these blogs existed to instruct people how to find material, and if webpage design had been easier, I might not have used blogging per se. The audience was face to face, so I wrote the information on each blog as a way to support what I was doing in class, and while I left the comments sections open, online communication wasn't the purpose for the blogs.
The fourth category, fundraising, belongs to The Pearlington Blog that Sharon Gerald and I did in August for Katrina cleanup in Pearlington, Mississippi. In contrast to the previous two blogs, TPB was very audience focused as we wanted donations to help restore the destroyed town. Sharon and I alternated shifts--six hours each, I think, and the time flew by. I was aided (big time) by Sharon's having sent me article links ahead of time, so much of my writing was to explain the article or the need and beg for money. We did not have a great deal of commenting from others during the blogathon, and I can't recall how much money we brought in, but on the whole, it was a good experience and an example of how a blog can be used to raise money on a national basis--Sharon lives in MS; I live in MD, and we couldn't have done it without the ease of use that blogging affords.
In the classroom, category number five, I've tried using blogs with Basic Readers and Writers, and I find that student technical skills are so wide that if I can at least teach them how to set up their own blog, comment on others, add some sidebar links and a picture, and then write a few posts, I've done my job. I have some other thoughts on why it works so slowly, but I'll save those for another post.
Another use of blogs in the classroom are class blogs, where I'm the blogger posting assignments, ideas and course materials on the pages. Two examples are: profh.typepad.com/myth and profh.typepad.com .
In both classes, students responded only when I made them-- as an assignment with points attached that would be graded (responded to, as well) nearly immediately. I'm doing a lot of rethinking about how I use blogs in courses, and am going to be modifying my m.o. next fall. Again, I have lots more to say about this, and I'll address it in a later post.
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