Tag: blogging

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meta

More on Journals

My wife has been going through old emails etc in an effort to construct her journal for the past few years. As she has been doing that, I have been going through old blog posts and seeing a little bit of my history for the last two years. The process has given me new perspective on the question of the intersection of blogs and journals.

Because of her efforts I recognize that journals have as much variety about them as I have long known that blogs have. My current position is that I will be blogging without regard to how it might serve as a journal. I can always go through later and decide about including any of my posts in a separate journal.

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7 Minute Lull

Most people have heard of the 7 minute lull. It is the idea that conversations tend to have a lull in them at regular intervals (theoretically 7 minutes). I have come to the conclusion that blogging has a similar phenomenon. This is based not only on my own blogging, but the blogging of many other bloggers I have read over the years. Everybody takes breaks from posting occasionally.

After 12 days of posting every day I discovered that I had not posted for two days in a row. That doesn’t worry me, but it got me thinking about the phenomenon. I have ready many times about the large number of blogs that get started and then die in their infancy. This is why. Many people, once they hit that first lull, never get back to blogging. The experiment ends and their voice goes silent.

I will not argue that everyone should get past that first lull, I know that blogging does not suit all people, but it is interesting to see the pattern. I suspect that most blogs that die do so on the first lull. Put another way, most blogs that survive the first lull will survive long term.

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meta

Blog, Journal, or Both

I am not new to blogging, but in some ways I am blogging from a new angle. On previous blogs I was posting enough to maintain three blogs and often posted multiple times each day. Since I have started this blog, I have managed to post every day so far. Last night I began to ask myself, “What do I want for this blog? Do I want to commit to posting every day?”

I like posting every day, and I hope to continue that, but I’m not sure how strong the commitment is at this point.

For me, there are a variety of purposes that a blog can serve. I have seen them used as a means of keeping in touch with distant friends and relatives. I have seen them used as journals as much as any locked diary. I have seen them used as a creative outlet to practice writing. I have seen them used as an outlet to push an ideological agenda. I have seen them used as a forum for publishing ideas and getting feedback from professional colleagues. The question I am asking myself is, what purpose do I want this blog to fill?

I know I want it as a way of communicating my thoughts and perspectives so that other people can see what I think and what I think about. I have a desire to keep a consistent journal, but do I want it in this blog, a private blog, or something entirely unlike a blog? I don’t know quite yet. It is easy to forget at first (before anyone discovers your blog) that information in blogs is generally available to the public. That is not really suitable for some types of journals. I guess my answer would be easier if I was sure about what type of journal I want to keep.

Why air this pointless monologue on the front page? Because, what little I am sure of in my blogging intentions, this fits. It is what I am thinking and I have no reason to keep it private, even if my public here can be counted on my thumbs – and even if my public were to grow in the future.

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Back on the Scene

It’s good to be back in the blogging scene. That may sound strange for a first post, but this is my fifth blog. The first two were little more than experiements. I then began publishing three more – representing different aspects of my life. That was back when I was an unabashed technophile.

Things have changed since I was last blogging. I no longer thrill when I am surfing the web and trying new gadgets. I have settled down to a point where I am finding much more of my joy in more pedestrian pursuits such as gardening, dutch oven cooking, and camping with my family.

None of that is reason enough to dump my previous blogs. They were good. I had more readers than I would have expected. Occationally there were some very stimulating conversations about the topics of interest to me. All of that I would have liked to keep, but my hosting provider changed policies and I was no longer able to get hosting to satisfy me for my domain. My domain is now parked, and I have not yet decided if I will keep it, or give it up.

I have gone for months wishing that I could share some of my new thoughts on a blog, but I did not want to return to blogger after seeing how nice some of the other blogging platforms are. I had moved on to WordPress, b2Evolution, and even Drupal. All of them offered options more advanced than blogger – and I am something of a control freak when it comes to my online persona. Then today I learned about the new Blogger beta and discovered that the folks at Google had helped Blogger to narrow the gap between themselves and other blogging software. Having given up on getting my own site up and running anytime soon, it sounded like just what I was looking for. Free, better than before, and in line with my less demanding requirements for a blog.

So here I am, back on the scene. While my outlook on technology has morphed somewhat, I hope to explore how technology can be really useful in our lives (especially mine) and also to highlight where the technologies of yesterday may actually be superior to their modern counterparts. Honestly I don’t think that the less advanced technology will prove superior very often, but I do think that some less modern perspectives could prove enlightening in the world of the Information Age.

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life

Victory

It was very fun to hear from Laura that she has decided to try blogging as a way to record/share her thoughts. I set up her blog yesterday and she got right to work. After all my talk about blogging it’s only fair that I should publicly welcome her to the blogosphere. I have no doubt that she’ll have some fun things to say and find some good friends who enjoy sharing with her.

Here’s her feed for those who are interested in reading what she posts.

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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.

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Education

Ubiquitous Computing

I have been thinking about ubiquitous computing since our discussion in class and I think I have the best current example of ubiquitous computing – Shadow netWorkspace. Not that Shadow is alone in that distinction, but it is one we can all relate to. I can be at any computer in the world with internet access and log on to Shadow and create, upload and view documents. I can keep up with anything that the rest of the class is doing there as well. I do not have to carry any hardware with me because the necessary tool (computer with internet access) is available almost anywhere that I go.

Come to think of it, my blog is accessible from any computer too.

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Education

RSS Tools

I talked about how RSS would be the best way to keep up with class blogs. In case anyone is interested in using RSS, I have found a page that lists some good RSS readers for any platform – RSS Readers. If you use Firefox as your browser (or possibly even Mozilla) there is a plugin called Sage that you can install here to have an RSS reader built right into your browser. If you choose to use an RSS reader and want the class blogs I have created an OPML file that you can import (I believe with any of the readers listed on that page) with all of our class blogs (3 so far) I will add more if others start blogging. You can download the OPML file here.

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Education

Hello World

Let’s kick this off with a little introduction. My name is David Miller and I am a graduate student at Utah State University in Instructional Technology. I have been waiting to start my Masters degree for two years now (finishing my Bachelors in Computer Science) and I am very excited to be starting now. My main interests in IT at this time are instructional design and instructional theory. I’ll have to link to some of the more interesting articles I have read when I get some time.