I suppose it's an inevitability of blogging that posts eventually end up commenting upon the practice of... blogging itself (reminds me of Godwin's Law, the notion that all Usenet discussions, continuing on long enough, will eventually devolve into a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis). Our last e-ped meeting, September 17, was about how one might go about incorporating blogs into classroom practice. While I've been in the habit of having students look at a slew of blogs online, a kind of genre-criticism exercise, I've never actually incorporated blogs as writing in class.
This meeting certainly gave me food for thought, but I'm torn. I like the prospect of incorporating blog-writing into classroom practice, but at the same time I wonder if such a practice goes against the spirit of the blogging subculture--a spontaneous, counter-hegemonic modus operandi of publication, thumbing its nose at the media of the establishment like a bunch of enfants terribles. I'm reluctant to co-opt that spirit because I might render it inauthentic. Still, I can clearly see that blogging has within it the potential to create a sense of community amongst students which transcends the confines of the classroom, and that's a good thing, right? The weblog highlights the political dimension of communication in areas that aren't usually overtly polical.
I reminded myself of Steven Johnson's speech at the last CCCC, where he talked about blogs and wikis as emergent, bottom-up web phenomena. I was enthralled--these utilizations of the web embodied exactly the kind of open-community, everything's-editable mentality that Tim Berners-Lee (founder of WWW) hoped for. Of course, now that blogging's the "next big thing," I suppose it would be only a matter of time before the corporate news and political behemoths stepped in to cook up their own blogs. Ah--the eternal media tug-of-war goes on and on....
Nevertheless, I still giggle (though now it's on the inside) everytime I hear the word "blog."
First off, I feel the need to comment on the caliber of student writing here at GT. It's quite good overall. I wouldn't say that the good writing here is better than the good writing I encountered at OSU, but there's a degree of consistency here. Whereas I would typically have 3 or 4 exceptional writers in a single class in Columbus, there's easily 3 times that here. Engineering nerds--go figure.
Permit me a digression. I've noticed an abundance of surveillance cameras here in Atlanta--the area is teeming with them. The stretch of I-75 from Kennesaw to downtown (in other words, my commute) has roughly 210 cameras lining it. You can't pass one without another being within eyeshot--coverage is that complete. Apparently, all this is part of an elaborate traffic and safety project initiated by the state DOT, called Georgia Navigator, and it encompasses the area highways and major city streets. I don't know... Maybe it is all about keeping us safe and facilitating our rush-hour drives, but the degree of infrastructure surrounding this project--the sheer number of cameras, the 50-foot steel poles, the power used to keep it running--makes me a slight bit paranoid, like I've been placed smack-dab in the middle of a Virtual Panopticon. As a rejoinder, then, check out the surveillance camera players, an NY-based guerilla theatrical/activist group that stages events for area surveillance cameras:
I suppose that's one way to fight the power; it's certainly safer than using BB guns...
On September 3, the incoming Britt Fellows had what was the first in a series of "e-ped" (electronic pedagogy) meetings in which we discussed the topic of asynchronous electronic communication...or, more specifically, Web Crossing (or more specifically, the bane of my existence). At the end of the meeting, each of us brought our own pedagogical approaches using this technology to the table, and afterwards I thought that the notes I took on this would make good fodder for a blog posting.
I've used spaces like this in the past (email listservs, web-discussion boards, and the like), and I've never really articulated to myself what it is I want students to get out of them...not to mention myself. But now, I think I'm starting to get a clearer idea:
1. These writing spaces should be inventional/generative. I think this is the most outwardly productive goal for this kind of writing space. When issuing a writing prompt, I generally like to have students collaboratively brainstorm possible topics/themes/formats/etc. in class; I encourage them to take this discussion, which usually pushes against the constraints of class time, onto the list. Students oblige by posting helpful URLs, ideas about a student's comments in the previous class, asking questions about the prompt not brought up in class. No, it isn't fancy, but it certainly is useful, and the feedback I get from students tends to confirm that suspicion.
2. These writing spaces should be used to build continuity between classes. I like the idea of bringing up postings in the next class, drawing out associations between the last lesson and the lesson or reading for that day. It's a good way of "framing" each class session: start by alluding to some of the posts, lead into the lesson plan, and end by urging students to take the conversation to the list. It's also a way of validating writing that could so easily fall into that informal, non-substantive, journally crud that so many of us know too well...
3. These writing spaces should provide a mixture of work and play. Otherwise, Jack Nicholson might show up with his axe and chase us into the shrub maze. :-) I encourage play on the list, and I find that it more often than not doesn't spiral into anarchy; students temper their play with serious scholarly inquiries, heads-ups about particular books or websites or documentaries, and once a call for an impromptu revision session (unheard of!). I usually grade their online participation rather casually (did they make the minimum number of posts?); instead of using the grade as a punitive measure, I've developed a strategy of "tapping" reluctant posters, calling out individuals and encouraging them to post on an interesting point they may have raised in class that day. Ideally, I think this approach is conducive to what ought to be one of the higher goals of the university culture at large: building a community of scholars.
...All of which is to say that the results of such an approach aren't easily replicated. One quarter, the list can be alive and full of thought-provoking intrigue, and the next, it's a cesspool of frat-guy humor and ribaldry. I try to gauge my participation in the fray accordingly.
One thing I like about this teaching gig here at Georgia Tech is that it primarily takes place in a wired classroom and not a computer lab. I’ve typically had to police students in the past, where the lure of the screen proved too tempting for them (online chess and card games seemed the most common distractions, as well as IMs). These distractions simply aren’t an issue so far, as I can’t imagine actual chess games or impromptu blackjack sessions breaking out in the back row, and I hope they won’t be on the days that we actually venture into the labs—perhaps the "specialness" of these visits will encourage them to stick to task.
I like that there’s one computer station in my class, which proves useful for quick troubleshooting—say a student has trouble accessing my online syllabus or registering for a Web Crossing account. The system integration works well. The projector is clear, and just last class I moved seamlessly from displaying some online content to showing a short video. Gushing over the logistics of all this might seem piddling, but when you’re faced with only a 50-minute class session, and when you’re used to plugging, unplugging, rebooting, and singing voodoo chants in an effort to get something up on the screen, you realize how much of an impediment trouble-laden tech can be to achieving your pedagogical goals.
On a side note, I finally found a good home for one of my favorite machines, but sadly one that I could no longer make good use of myself because of its lack of portability. My original bondi-blue iMac (233 Mhz, 4Gb hard drive, codename Columbus) served me well for nearly 5 years, so I felt that I owed it to the beast to place it in an environment where it was still likely to get used. Ashley’s parents had been plogging along on a Tandy TS80 for so many years, using it for word processing, printing documents, and similar limited tasks, so I thought the iMac would allow them—not to mention Ashley’s younger brother Nathan—a chance to expand their personal computing options into such exotic realms as email, web browsing, gameplay, etc. As I cleaned it off, uninstalled unnecessary files, and reinstalled some apps, I realized just how viable a computer from 1998 running OS 8.1 could still potentially be, especially when resource-hogging multimedia applications aren’t an issue. Perhaps it was slightly sluggish, but a memory upgrade would make it nearly as peppy as anything around today. Godspeed, little iMac; this world is hardly through with ye.
Oh—while it’s fresh on my mind, a quick plug’s in order. I’ve started up a group called the Columbus Consortium to Combat Planned Obsolescence (C3PO), which ideally will end up being a collection of hobbyists, hackers, programmers, tinkerers, and people with a general interest in exploring how to extend the life and utility of older computer technologies. The Yahoo! Group site is located at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/columbusconsortium, and the mission statement can be found here. If you’re reading this, you are, of course, invited to join. I’m excited to see what innovative thinking and products come of this venture.