Technology and Culture

The EDUCAUSE Information Resources Library has fairly recently created a weblog category focused on the use of weblogs in education. A lot of people contact me asking for these kinds of sources, so now I have one handy link to send. :)

In the reviews section of Computers and Composition Online, there's a review of Into the Blogosphere written by Lanette Cadle.

I encountered both of these recently in conversations with colleagues in various departments about academic blogging and using blogging in writing pedagogy.

First: "I want to do A, B, and C in my (Insert discipline here) (Insert course number here) class. Would I be able to use a blog for that, or must I enter the WebCT gulag?"

Second: [Colleague who's just starting to learn about blogs, reflecting after our lengthy discussion of public/private and the pros and cons of real name v. pseudonym in blogging] "You know, academic blogging under your real name is sort of like the intellectual equivalent of going to a nude beach."

Note: I'm putting that second one in just because I found it so humorous. I'm not trying to weigh in on the real name v. pseudonym debate. One is not more valuable than the other, in my opinion, and there are definite advantages and disadvantages associated with each choice.

Memos to Ourselves is an audioblog open to anyone who wants to contribute. So far I'm, uh, underwhelmed by the creativity of the contributors (hear, for example, this post), but I'll keep checking back; an open audioblog is a pretty cool idea. Oh, and I'm wondering how this woman is doing now. Via Feministe.

We've gone live. Here's the official release note:
Announcing---

Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs
ed. Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman, University of Minnesota

This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. The collection takes a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others.

Into the Blogosphere is a first in many ways. Along with its being the first scholarly collection focused on the blog as rhetorical artifact, the editors also offer an innovative approach to intellectual property and to publishing. There are a number of peer reviewed journals in digital format. However, with an edited collection, the desired outcome is usually a hard-copy book, so the standard process has been to turn to a publisher with a proposal, then typically wait several years before the book actually comes out.

Happened to find these old exams online, for those who might want to see rhetorical theory sample questions other than the ones I've proposed. Oh, and I'm finally posting the reading list for my specialty area: feminist theory and research on gender and computer-mediated communication. Please excuse the ugly formatting; some citations are in APA, some MLA, sometimes the articles came from coursepacks and not all the publication information is there...it's anarchy!

Jason Kottke has some thorough coverage of the Plain Layne hoax, which has also been reported in City Pages. There was a discussion about taking bloggers at face value over at Lauren's some time ago too. The basic rundown: Odin Soli, a 35-year-old man living in Woodbury, Minnesota, kept a blog as Plain Layne, a young woman with a tumultuous life. From the City Pages article:

Despite the moniker, Layne was anything but plain. Within the past few months, she recounted a rape that she suggested led her to lesbianism, became engaged to a formerly straight woman, suffered a dramatic breakup with said woman (partially because her fiancée resented being dissected on Layne's site), hooked up and noisily quarreled with a girl from her work cafeteria, met her birth parents for the first time, got involved with a risky internet startup, and had a ton of hot sex (which, because of her linguistic flourishes, was often hottest when solo). All that while keeping up a high-volume website of 5,000 unique visitors per day and middle-managing an IT group for "Minicorp," a large pseudonymous company that from her descriptions sounded like 3M or Cargill or Honeywell. In short: Anaïs Nin, I'd like you to meet William Gibson.

In addition, Layne had profiles on Orkut and Friendster. I'm following the discussions of Layne because I'm still thinking about how to defend the kind of research I want to do against those who look askance at internet research--against what I call the authentication imperative. Arguments have been made that there's a degree of fiction in every representation of self online; you're always only presenting a part of yourself. I'm not sure how persuasive they are for a lot of people, though. Does Turkle discuss this issue in Life on the Screen? What other internet researchers have written about the authentication imperative?

Update: More at Netwoman and at Trish's place.