The blogosphere and academia

First off - I wanted to make this a comment, but blogger was being a little uncooperative so it'll be post.

Blogging and coursework always seem like a funky marriage to me. Sure, I think they can work together, but sometimes it just takes a little massaging and a little pre-class priming, if you know what I mean. I think it's always a smart move - as Bill has done for this class - to outline the rationale behind a blog, otherwise there may be confusion about the purposes - pedagogical and practical - behind using a blog.


It's been my experience that writing for blogs can make some people uncomfortable. They're not sure what a blog post ought and ought not to be (I know this is certainly true for me). Sometimes they write as though they're seeking publication in a scholarly journal and other times they incoherently rant (and often preface their posts by admitting as much). And while I don't favor a particular type of writing over any other, I do think it's interesting to look at the types of writing yielded by blogging, especially when it's commingled with academic purposes.

Here are some definitions of blog writing that I've found: Wikipedia, The Online Journalism Review, Tech Crunch ... I am sure there are others.

I wonder how these aims, goals and ideas are changed when they enter the Ivory Tower. I always think it's interesting to look at blogs that have been completed in the past and track their trajectory and narrative. I have a very immature theory that the first handful of posts go a long way in defining the ethos of a blog.

Here's a blog our Writing Center Theory and Administration class worked on last semester. If you get a chance to take a look, I'd like to hear comments. To me, and I posted this once, it looked more like typical, alphanumeric reading responses than a blog. The hypertextuality of the blog was a little limited -- very few links, hardly any images, etc.

Do these elements define a blog, or am I wrong? What are the infrastructures that define blog writing? In this case, is it the syllabus? Is it the grading contract we've entered with the class?

I think this raises questions about a sort of "literacy-muscle-memory" that seems to exist (I know there's a real term for it, but I can't remember), whereby we use new tools in the same old ways. I don't necessarily think it's a detriment to the blog that more hypertextual and multimodal elements weren't used, I just think it's interesting how we sometimes treat blogs in academia.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this because I think blogging is an incredibly powerful tool, but I find striking the balance between formal and informal can be a pretty large obstacle if there aren't clear expectations.