Tag: Blog Studies

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Classifications

Get comfortable. This is going to be along one. I have been thinking about this subject for a while, but suddenly in the last 24 hours I have changed my position.

I was fully behind Will when he posted Blogging vs Journaling again as he argued:

Xanga is not a blog site. It’s an online journal site. There is nothing inherently wrong with journaling online (provided it’s done with the proper precautions.) But there is something wrong with calling that blogging. And that’s what’s happening more and more. And the problem comes when parents and principals equate Xanga and other such sites with blogging, which in turn predisposes them negatively toward efforts to use blogs the way we know they can be used.

Not so anymore. After reading The Horseless Carriage by Tom Coates I have changed my stance on the subject.

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Education

EduBlog Digest

Okay, I’ve been thinking more about this than I should have (it woke me up at 4:00 in the morning) and I have a great idea for how to keep good blog dialogs visible – we should publish a journal of blogversations which are academic in nature. I’m not sure how to get this all down in writing, but I’ll try to summarize my thinking here and see what we come up with together.

“Articles” would consist of all the blog posts, comments and trackbacks of an idea that grew into a conversation. Each piece of the conversation would be attributed to the author of that piece and at the bottom of the conversation would be a list of contributing authors – everyone with a trackack into the conversation – with links to their blog pages. All content would be licensed under an appropriate CC license. The editors might have to seek permission sometimes from some potential contributors if they have too restrictive of licenses on their sites. Off the top of my head I can think of two such conversations from Nate, this one and quantum cognition. Obviously there are plenty of others out there, but those were just the first two examples that came to mind right now.

The structure of the journal would be to have an editorial board who would help to monitor and gather conversations as they emerge. We would need to have standards about what constituted a conversation (ex. at least two posts each from at least two authors) and then add those conversations to the journal that met the criteria as well as updating conversations in the journal that have grown since they were included. Besides the articles we might include an editorial piece that is just for the journal not more than once a month that talks about trends that the editors are seing in educational blogging.

The journal needs to be syndicated in blog friendly format (RSS) and non-blogger friendly format (email distribution when new articles or editorials come out) so that non-bloggers can be exposed to the rich conversation in a format they are comfortable with. When new articles are mailed out we can send links to those articles that have been updated since the previous mailing.

I have more ideas about the structure of the database that would support the journal but I’m not sure I have the know how to make the software to power the journal (we might be able to modify WP or something). Beyond that we would need hosting and a domain (EBD.org?) before we could really get under way. Maybe we should write a grant to fund the endeavor. By now my post has become confusingly complex so let me know what you think about the idea and how you would be willing to participate.

This is the type of site that we could advertise .

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Education

Breaking In

Nate has some great (and mostly accurate) things to say about Stature and Zero-Sum Games. If you go read his post make sure to read Ward’s comments as well, he has a valuable perspective to add.

I notice that while we have a mutual goal we seem to disagree a little bit on the proper approach to attaining that goal. I agree that the blogosphere does not operate under the same principles as traditional publishing. That fact that in traditional publishing “the number of voices is restricted by the economics of speaking” while “the blogosphere removes that economic barrier” is a salient point. The area that we seem to disagree on is in the rules governing diffusion and adoption.

Nate disputes the value of having people with stature in AECT joining the blogosphere. His argument is that their stature does not carry over to the blogosphere and I agree. The reason that I believe it is necessary to have such “ranked players” joining the blogosphere is not because their stature is useful in the blogosphere, but rather because they have social and professional stature within AECT. While publishing in the blogosphere is a different animal (probably a dog if Alan has anything to say about it) than publishing in traditional journals, diffusion and adoption of blogging by people within AECT is the same as diffusion and adoption of internet courses by people within AECT. In each case there are some adventurous people who stay on the cutting edge of technology but widespread adoption does not take place until some of the established people begin adopting the practice. When the ranked players begin using blogs more people who are slower to adopt new ideas will view them as a legitimate outlet for expression and information gathering. Admittedly that presupposes that there is enough good content. If there is enough good content already then a higher profile and broader participation are all that is lacking, if there is not enough good content then we have very little to recommend what we are doing to our friends in the field.

Categories
Education

Interesting Discussion

Here is an interesting discussion at Situativity regarding the uses of blogs. One of the problems that I find as far as reaching the critical mass is that people blogging in education do not seem to be a typical sample of people in education which means that the content of educational blogs is not typical of the conversation in the field of education.