Blogging

I've been hemming and hawing about posting this, but hey, why not. Back in Fall 2002, my first semester in my doctoral program, I took a theory and methods survey course, and one of the assignments was to write a review essay. I wanted to write it on weblogs, but at the time, most of the sources on weblogs were popular rather than scholarly. I pitched the idea anyway, though, explaining that it was a new technology, etc. The essay I've attached to this post is the result. Parts of it make me cringe, well...just about all of it, really, but it is a general representation of what I was thinking around two and a half years ago about blogging.

Today Krista and I are scheduled to lead a workshop for the Digital Media Center Faculty Fellowship Program. Much to my dismay, though, Krista isn't going to be able to make it; please leave her heal-up-soon wishes. We had agreed to post our presentation on our blogs, though, so I've attached it to this post in both PowerPoint format and OpenOffice format if any of you would like to see.

My advisor suggested that, before my prospectus defense, I write a couple of pages about punditry: its etymology, its connotations, its use in mass media, its use in the blogosphere, and what I mean when I use the term "punditry" in my dissertation. It's an apt recommendation, one a colleague had also made several weeks earlier, so I'm taking it to heart. I don't have the complete explication done yet, but this evening, I've been assembling links to weblogs with "pundit" in the title. If you know of others, please let me know.

Are you ready to find out how many blogs have "pundit" somewhere in the title? Even I was surprised...

There's a good discussion on Kairosnews about free, collaboratively authored, online, Creative Commons-licensed, open-access composition textbooks. As you might guess, I like the idea, but the planning and execution are going to be very tricky if a group actually gets together and does this thing. But as I was writing my comment, it occurred to me how easy it would be to assemble an online reader for a first-year composition course. There's so much writing talent in the blogosphere, and many bloggers have Creative Commons licenses. I might just do it: Find great, essay-style posts that model qualities of good writing style and argumentation, group them into themes, and copy them into my course site. I could use Drupal's collaborative book module. I'm excited! I'm already thinking of posts I might want to use, like for a unit on the war, I'm thinking of Mike's post titled The Photos and Jeanne's And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink: A scattered and contradictory post on responsibility and Abu Ghraib (To be sure, Jeanne doesn't have a CC license, but maybe she'd give permission for her work to be reproduced for educational, noncommercial purposes.). I'm also thinking of Jeanne's recent post titled Democrats, Aristocrats, and the Torturer's Assistants.

Such a reader could be assembled for any class; I'm thinking too of an intro to Gender Studies class. I might use something along the lines of Dr. Crazy's "Why Women's Studies Sucks" series (Part I and Part II, and hat tip to Jonathan for those), and the responses from The Little Professor and others. Ummmm, yeah, my argument would be stronger if these blogs actually had CC licenses, I know (heh), but again, they might allow their work to be used for this purpose. If not, there are many with CC licenses who have excellent work on their blogs, like Rad Geek, Lauren, and many more. The more I think about this idea, the more I like it. Reduced cost to students, more freedom for the instructor to design the course around themes, and more opportunity for the students to be an active audience, conversing with the authors of the work if the students also blog, or even if they don't, as most bloggers have an email address displayed.

I thought of Timothy Burke's comment at Laura's when I read The Waiter You Stiffed Has Not Forgotten. In response to Laura's response to the article on parents' blogs, Burke wrote, "I think you misunderstood what it is that the Times has a low regard for. It's not parenting, it's blogging." After reading this article, which discusses weblogs kept by servers (www.bitterwaitress.com, www.waiterrant.blogspot.com and www.webfoodpros.com are mentioned), I tend to disagree that the Times has an across-the-board low regard for blogging. Julia Moskin, the author of the article, seems alarmed at the pent-up hostility of the posters:

The vengefulness of the posts, and the recurrence of anecdotes that involve adding foreign fluids to customers' food, from breast milk to laxatives, is enough to turn anyone who dares to enter a restaurant into a nervous, toadying wreck.

but simultaneously sympathetic; waiting tables is a stressful job, and people who do it need to vent. She's written a pretty even-handed piece which includes quotes from servers and from higher-ups in the restaurant industry, who, not surprisingly, disapprove of the blogs.

Many of you have seen it already, but if you haven't visited it lately, you really ought to check out Network(ed) Rhetorics, the course blog for the graduate seminar Collin Brooke is teaching this semester. Most recently, seminar participants have been discussing academic blogging and the use of weblogs in pedagogy, and readings include essays from Into the Blogosphere and lots of other interesting stuff.

New 5ives! Especially funny is Five terrible fake LiveJournal memes.

I have to disable trackbacks for the time being due to too much $p4/\/\. Gah. More later. They haven't been deleted, just made unavailable for the moment.