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.

Hi All,

My name is Esther. I'm a second year M.A student in Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy in the Rhetoric and Writing program. I earned my B.A degree in Literature and Sociology and my M.A in African Literature from the Univerisity of Nairobi many many years ago. Before joining MSU, I had worked for four years as probation officer in Kenya!! While I was really really nervous making the transition from workplace to the academia, I have been surprised how much I borrow from my past work experience. This has been helpful in helping me bridge workplace literacies with academic literacies, particulary at the writing center where I have been working as a tutor for the last one and half years. This has been a very exciting experience.

My research interest revolve around global hiphop cultures/ literacies. My current research is on Kenyan Hip-hop, particulary its unique, hybrid language called Sheng. I'm taking this course because I think I'm always behind when it comes to technology and I need a little catching up to do. More importantly, because I see myself going into teaching in the near future, I want to be able to apply the latest technologies in my classroom teaching. I'm sure the technologies will also come in handy as continue doing my research. I look forward to participating in this class and learning from each one of you.

Thanks,
Esther

When Course Blogging Goes Well (Hopefully)

One of the readings for Teaching with Technology is this cautionary tale by Steve Krause called "When Blogging Goes Bad." As the title suggests, it is about a time when his decision to use a blog as a way to facilitate learning in a course didn't go terribly well.

Steve passes along several bits of advice to his colleagues who are considering using a blog, and this piece has proven particularly useful for many people based on how frequently it has been cited and even re"printed" (even though the original version linked above was published in an online journal, it has in fact been printed in one or more edited collections as well). One of the goals I've set for AL 881 is to engage in reflective use of technology, modeling the kind of decision-making that I hope to encourage all members of the course to do as they design their own instructional experiences for students.

In the course syllabus, I've laid out my expectations for posting to the blog. Here, following Krause, it seems like a good idea to lay out an explicit rationale for using this blog as an instructional medium.

First: blog entries persist. The "sprint" format of this course means that we won't have a weekly face-to-face meeting where we can coordinate, reflect, and review material as we might in a traditional graduate seminar. Instead, we will have 2 weeks of online interaction, 1 week of intensive in-residence meetings, 1 month of individual work with peer & instructor reviews and consultations, and a final symposium where members present their projects. This blog is a place, then, where I ask members of the course to contribute their thoughts on the readings, their work in progress, and their own goals for the course. The posts will stay up, so the class members can come back to them as they do their own reading and writing over the summer, coordinating and calibrating their views with those of their peers.

Second: blog entries are just formal enough to foster reflection, and informal enough to permit a mix of personal and professional connections with the class material. Folks can comment on posts to keep discussion going, but even if the comments are few the posts themselves, taken together, can give us all a sense of how others in the group are thinking about the material we are reading and the work we are all doing. Here I am acknowledging Krause's discussion of blogs as a "publishing space" rather than a "discussion space." We'll use e-mail and group chat for discussion, and the blog to encourage folks to take their ideas and views "public" within the space of the course.

Third: blog posts allow me, the instructor, to monitor the level of engagement for each participant. The posts tell me where you are finding things valuable and where things are less valuable for your own interests. This, in turn, lets me know what additional or alternative readings I might suggest to you as you work on your major project, for instance. This is not just a matter of making sure each of you is visible - that is always a challenge for online instruction, but blogs are not the only way to solve that particular problem. Rather, it is a way to for me to get to know who you are as a professional and a scholar just a bit better and perhaps faster than I might otherwise.

Finally, using a blog in this way lets us have a conversation about a particular technology - a particularly common one, in fact - that we can now bring some personal experience to with regard to what it does and does not help instructors and students achieve. We will do that with other technologies in the course as well: Angel, Convore, Twitter, Google Docs, and perhaps others along the way.

Introduction

Hi there all!

My name is Shari Wolke, and I am a Master's student in the Writing and Rhetoric program here. My bachelor's degree is from Michigan State as well; I graduated with an English Education degree with a minor in Biology. I became interested in R & W after taking Julie Lindquist's ENG 302. Since then, I have discovered that my true passion is language. That is, yes, I do like English literature, no, I am not interested in teaching it as a career or as interested in it as I am issues of language and linguistic rights. Along with that, one of my research interests is Jamaican Patois, partly because it is the first language of my partner, Abijah, who is from Jamaica. I am interested in discovering how using a language like Patois in the first-year writing classroom and explicitly teaching for language justice can benefit all students.

In terms of my teaching experience, I have taught two semesters in R&W here at MSU- in the fall I taught WRA 150 and in the spring WRA 140. Teaching is most certainly my passion; I can't imagine myself doing anything else in my future. Thus I am applying for the PhD this fall- wish me luck! What I hope to learn from this course, then, is how other folks use technology in their writing classrooms, since I am fairly new to the game.

In terms of my interests outside this class, as you might see from my facebook if you friend me, my other passion is riding my horse Kenny and competing at shows in a sport called dressage (if you don't know what this is, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQgTiqhPbw). I will be competing my horse throughout the summer as well.

I am looking forward to learning new ways of integrating technology into my classroom and looking forward to learning with and from you all!

Hi Guys!

My name is Paul Jaques and I am working on my Masters in Public Relations. I have to be honest that I did not know much about this class before I enrolled but I am excited to be taking it and love it the more I hear about what we will be learning and working with.

I received my Bachelors Degree from Grand Valley State University (1999) in Advertising/PR. I had no clue what I wanted to do but knew that I wanted to work with people so I took a position right out of school as the marketing Director for a Lansing magazine called The View.

After a year in the magazine I was hired into a position as a recruiter for another Lansing firm called OnLine Employment where I dealt mainly with manufacturing positions.
I stayed there for about a year and then was hired as a recruiter for a business in East Lansing called Career Quest where I was a professional recruiter/headhunter and stayed there for 7 years.

I then was hired into Michigan State University in Jan. of 2008 as The Internship Developer for the University. In my position I reach out to Alums and businesses around the world and attempt to connect them with MSU students and I love my position here at State.

I use technology every day of my life and would be lost without it. I have found that Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin are very helpful in research and teach students how to use these programs. I was very fortunate last semester to be able to co-teach the "social Media for Business" class at MSU and it opened up my eyes to what undergrads are into and not into.

I look forward to meeting and working with all of you and hope everyone has a great summer!

With Great Anticipation

Hello everyone,

My name is Shenika Hankerson and this is my first graduate seminar at Michigan State University. I am enrolled as a Lifelong Education student.

My educational background revolves around composition, rhetoric, pedagogy and technology. I received a Master of Arts degree from Eastern Michigan University in 2002. My master’s program was very beneficial, as I received an immense amount of training in the above realm. In particular, I learned how to:

• Develop engaging writing assignments (composition and rhetoric)
• Develop effective instructional methods (pedagogy)
• Develop course-related content for electronic transmittal (technology)

I love teaching! I have been teaching college level courses for ten years. I instruct developmental, basic and introductory English courses (theme-based). I also instruct literature courses (novels). My classroom practices reflect what I learned at EMU. However, I try to integrate current practices as well. Thus I often experiment with innovative practices learned from current academic articles, conferences, research, etc.

I try to ensure that my students remain engaged in my courses (and in education as a whole) by using current electronic components. I currently use Facebook, Twitter and PbWorks in the classroom. I have also experimented with Second Life and Diipo.

Technology has offered numerous personal and professional capabilities. Thus I believe it’s an important part of learning. I am interested in technology and literacy. My specialized interest lies in digitizing literacy themed courses for educational purposes. I would like to develop a multi-technological course that helps students learn via diverse electronic components. My hope is to build a strong reading, writing, learning and technological proficiency foundation.

The title (With Great Anticipation) reflects my current disposition. I am eagerly anticipating learning innovative content and implementing it into my courses.

Hello All!

I'm Cait Ryan and I'm excited to learn with and from each of you over the next several months. I'm enrolled in this course as a lifelong education student with plans to apply to the DRPW graduate program this fall.

My Background
I completed my undergraduate work in Spring 2010 with a double major in English: Practical Writing and Musical Theatre Performance. My initial belief entering undergrad was that my passion was in performing and I could potentially use the English degree to find side-work other than waiting tables.

I have to admit, I was surprised to find throughout my studies that the exact opposite was true. While I still enjoyed theatre and performing as a hobby, my work in the practical writing program enabled me to acknowledge a developing passion for writing and teaching in digital environments. I was fortunate enough to work with two teachers in the practical writing program whose use of multiple technologies throughout their courses completely revolutionized how I viewed what it means to be a "writer." Through their example, I slowly developed the goal of becoming a teacher of writing, with a focus on using various technologies to enhance students' abilities as writers in a digital age.

Current Technologies
I currently work for a Thomson Reuters company in Allegan, MI, primarily developing and maintaining courses in our online training program, bcpLearning. My favorite part of the job is taking a rough draft from one of our authors and editing, revising, and reworking it into a course that will effectively train students in our digital learning environment. Though my work does not include teaching directly, it allows me to employ the various technologies involved in bcpLearning to create effective learning environments for our students.

Taking This Course
I chose this course because its core focus reflects the goal that drew me to the program at MSU: to follow in my teachers' footsteps by utilizing new technologies to become an effective and influential teacher of writing.

My current plan is to research the development and implementation of technologies that will enable non-English Majors to view themselves as writers and equate developing effective writing skills with success in their chosen field of study. I hope that by contributing to and learning from this course, I can build on my understanding of digital pedagogy and develop a specific focus for the research I plan on conducting at MSU.

Greetings!

Hey, everyone --

I'm Mike Tardiff, a first year master's student at State in the Writing and Rhetoric department. I'm a recent transplant from Bangor, Maine and am excited about teaching, especially with technology. That's me and my girlfriend, Laura, on the coast of Maine circa 2008.

My professional/educational background is really rooted in creative non-fiction. I originally thought myself to be an aspiring journalist but fell out of love when I realized writing sports recaps and stories wouldn't impart the sort of change and impact I was hoping to achieve with my life. I always thought, in the back of my mind, I'd like to teach but never knew where to start...

When my mother lost her factory job and went back to school at community college, I watched her undergo a transformation. She was becoming newly literate in so many ways.

My hope, one day, is to help people like mom get a grip on what can be a scary world by teaching writing at the community college level. Technology can be particularly frightening and I hope by taking this class I can learn new ways to leverage technology for pedagogical purposes.

Because I want to help non-traditional, adult learners, I know my own literacy with technology will prove to be an important skill-set. My hope is to explore and examine the scholarship regarding technology and think about effective ways to teach digitally. This last semester a classmate and I used inDesign as a platform for teaching visual rhetoric. Our work made me start thinking about how malleable the digital world and software really can be, if we allow it.

I have no doubt this course will challenge me since I'm fairly new to the world of pedagogy, but I look forward to investigating the tensions of digital teaching environments and studying the current trends in digitized pedagogy. Talking about digital environments and technology is pretty new territory for me, but I know it'll be healthy and worthwhile to build a new knowledge base.

When I'm not doing academic stuff, I like sports, animals, short fiction, photography and food.

I look forward to working with all of you.

Learning & Interaction

Learning requires interaction. Students interact with students, with course materials, with the teacher. When we plan courses in face-to-face environments, we often plan fairly complicated sets of interactions for a single class meeting. But when we teach in online or hybrid course formats, changing the interaction may mean changing tools, spaces, or times when certain activities may take place.

It all requires a bit more advanced planning too.

The diagram below shows different types of interaction styles that might be in play in a given class session or activity regardless of the learning environment. These can be used to plan sessions or to cue students about what to expect for a given session. When students are coming (at least partially) from corporate settings for instance - where each corporation has specific technology platforms that they use within the workforce, they might select different tools to manage each of these interaction styles. The teacher can specify some, but leave others up to students. The classroom’s demands can change with the session/semester.

graphic created in Powerpoint using drawing shapes (circle + half-circle for people; block arrows)

These symbols/labels (or better ones!) can even be used in a course schedule or syllabus to cue students about the types of interaction planned for each activity.

What are your favorite tools for facilitating?

Presentation	Discussion (lg group)	Studio (sm group)	Consultation
Powerpoint w/ audio & animation (anyone using prezi?)	Second Life? brightmoo there must be some free alternatives to second life by now?	Conference call w/ Skype (& Doodle poll to coordinate times)	Skype
YouTube + Clipnabber	Campfire - rooms, hosted, + nice archiving	PBwiki for group authoring	Instant Messaging Google Chat
Camtasia - Jing both by TechSmith or Camstudio (free) Microsoft Expression Encoder (Windows only)	Discussion forums in your local LMS	Dropbox for file sharing...nice because it has 1) public URLs 2) synching across devices (e.g. home & lab/school machines)
Audacity for Podcasting podbean.com (free podcasting hosting) HD-Ogg for podcasting http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php (record in one click)		Simple real-time co-writing: http://etherpad.org/ http://typewith.me/
Semi-Auto Feedback TextExpander http://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/ Texter http://lifehacker.com/238306/lifehacker-code-texter-windows SemiAuto Grader http://sio.midco.net/jblessinger/index.htm Autohotkey (very versatile): http://www.autohotkey.com/