Blogs making a difference

Maureen Dowd's Swimming up mainstream: Bloggers just want to be us reports a face off between traditional journalists and bloggers at a new media conference. More importantly, Dowd's article references the political blogging community, such as Daily Kos and the politicians who atteneded the conference.

I will most likely share the article with my students to discuss the differences between journalism and blogging, but I believe the article actively engages with the fact that these blogs can and do make a difference. I'm hoping the awareness might provide a little more motivation for my students.

What I find especially noteworthy in the article were the bloggers who left blogging for other positions. Apparently, blogging didn't hurt their careers…..

Comments on or off?

A firestorm over one-way blogging announces some of the top bloggers have turned off comments. I hadn't really considered the issue before reading the article.

Is it blogging if the comments are shut off? I think so, because a blog is essentially a journal genre. You're still sharing your thoughts and ideas, initializing a conversation with the reader(s). That being said, you do miss the other half of the conversation.

 

Suspensions for Blogging: The New Venue for West Side Story

According to KATU 2in Portland, Oregon, six students were suspended for blogging on MySpace. The students allegedly posted threats to a rival gang in school and caught someone's attention.

Indirectly, MySpace also received some bad press tonight on Dateline. While only AOL and Yahoo chat rooms are mentioned explicitly in the article, reporters on the program made it clear that predators stalk where the teens are, so MySpace must be included when we discuss online sexual predators.

Ivor Tossell's Love to hate MySpace? Check out the buzz announces the possible decline of MySpace, but as Tossell points out, this isn't going to change anything. It simply means a new venue.

Audio Elements and sites

Professor Krause is correct; podcasting is hot, hot, hot. So, since my students created the first documentation for podcasting on our campus, does that make me a hottie? Hmmm….One of the first rules of graphic design and research on the internet is to avoid sites with excessive media, but my students might add podcasts to their clients' sites in Writing for the Web.

I do like that it won't automatically play, but I worry about the technology out there as well. Can our clients assume that their clients have high speed access? Probably many of them do, and it would position our clients' sites as "cutting edge," at least for the moment. I think the question we need to ask is whether or not our clients have a mac. It can be done without a mac, as my technical writing students demonstrated in their documentation for the Writing Center, but I think a mac would make it easier for clients once my students leave. And I don't even want to think about the fair use issues–not until I have to anyway.

Team Blogging: Effective Team Monitoring?

Writing for the Web will include a collaborative writing project in conjunction with a real client. During collaborative writing projects in the past, I've used team blogs to monitor team members' input and the activities members are pursuing to complete their tasks. In addition, I've asked students to evaluate their own and their team members' performances.

However, given the fact that students in Writing for the Web will be blogging individually over the course of the semester, I'm not sure a team blog is the right answer. I will definitely keep the evaluation, but I'm hesitating over the blog. At that point in the semester, students should be comfortable with blogging, but it might just be too much work. According to The Bioteaming Manifesto, technology might impede collaborative efforts despite the promise of technology to increase team performance.

Feeds

I can't seem to make the RSS feeds work correctly. So far, only one of mine does. Correction, the one isn't working now either. I have followed WordPress's directions for adding a feed–simply copy the url and add /feed on the end. This worked for one, but not for the others.

 Where am I going wrong? What do I need to do to make this work?

Web Design Materials

I found yet another great site I'll be using in class, Spiderpro. I may need to whittle down the sites a bit, but I will definitely keep this one. Spiderpro offers 100 tips on dos and don'ts for the web, whether it's blogging or creating a site.

And I think I've changed my mind on the book. I would like to use The Non-Designer's Web Book.  I think they'll find it useful, especially in terms of central web basics, such as proximity, alignment, and color. In addition, we'll link to the online books already discussed.

Blogging Bankers

Bloomberg's Wall Street's Junior Set Tells All as Banking Meets Blogging is an article I might share in class. It demonstrates the various uses of blogging, and also mentions Technorati, a site students should be familiar with as they blog.

The article points out that young bankers are blogging anonymously, and so far, they haven't faced any serious consequences. It does mention that consequences might be in their future, given the nature of the banking business and confidentiality. It almost seems like a witch hunt……

You’ve been blogging–go straight to the principal’s office

Writing used to be used as punishment in schools, but now writers are being punished. Detention, suspension for bad blogging? in USA Today reports that Chicago students may be punished for inappropriate blogging in the controversial MySpace. While I agree that we should have the freedom to post what we want when we want, I don't necessarily see this form of censorship as completely out of line.

As I've noted here, there can be serious repercussions for academics and others for blog content, up to and including lack of employment to begin with, loss of job if currently employed, and possible repercussions due to plagairism as we move into a more "controlled" digital age. The question in my mind is how far back will employers look? You betcha; I think they'll be looking at old material too.

Outed

Being a graduate student who does blog, I was not surprised by Carolyn Kleiner Butler's "Blogging Their Way Through Acadame". Also not surprising is the fact that many graduate students choose to blog anonymously. What I found disturbing was the deliberate exposure of anonymous bloggers by other graduate students. And these outings were no accident.