Idea Warehouse

Good Blog Book

I just picked up "Blogosphere Best of Blogs" book (shown in the Books I'm Reading List) this weekend.  Spent a good bit of time Saturday and Sunday looking over the various blogs that are listed in it, and then printed the bonus chapters (13 and 14) because they were more useful than the other parts of the book to me. For anyone who feels like they need to fill in some gaps in their blog knowledge, this seems like a good place to go.  I just wish I had a week to just blog things and read others' blogs.  Funny post-script: check out the back FOUND page in Wired this month, note the spine of the book on the left....wonder if that's what the future will hold...?

Blogging, Podcasting, and Wikis

Forgive me, blog readers, for I have sinned. It has been 6 months since my last entry.  But I've been busy helping my students work on their research projects and blogs and plan to (upon being granted permission) link student work on their hypertext research projects to this site, as well. Their projects are due Monday and Wednesday in their respective classes, so within that week, they will be posted. Meanwhile, I've been contemplating how and why podcasting might be employed. Quite a few more of my students live and breathe by their IPods.

Also, I'd like to know what kinds of discussions educators have about the use/citation of wikipedia entriess in their students' research projects. More and more entries are becoming quite credible, and I hate to dismiss that obvious area of research. Just as we baby-boomers used to (or at least I did) pore over our World Book Encyclopedias and learn a lot that way, this generation seems to get most of their information from the web and wikipedia info.

Blogging on the Front Page

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Christmas Day issue featured a terrific article quoting Dennis Jerz and his students and how they are learning about writing in the public realm even when it doesn't feel like they are. Yay! This is a great article! As a former copy editor, I know that the spot they featured it in is the most prime real estate possible for newspapers, and on Christmas Day! wow! People stay at home, read the paper after the gifts are opened, find out about how blogging IS changing the way we think about writing and public discourse. Way to to go, Dennis!! The reporter did a good job with this one.

Blogging Entry

So this is my blog entry for all of you students who might visit, as well as any academics who end up visiting. I asked you all to write about (anything about) blogs in some way in your first blog entry, although for some of you, this won't be your first, at all. So I'll tell you about my background and/or interest in blogs. In 2004, I was one of the workshop presenters in a Blog U. (or was it U-Blog) Workshop at CCCC, the Conference for College Composition and Communication held in March every year. Last year I also participated, although I wasn't able to be there in person, and this year, I'm actually leading the workshop (yikes!). This workshop will be about Blog Basics, not so much advanced blog info. Today I gave everyone a handout that captured the first part of an Into the Blogosphere article by Miller and Shephard, and suggested that students use Blogger to start off with or they could use Myspace or whatever they want, as long as I am able to access the site. The workshop in which I participated in 2004 was full of really cool people who knew a lot more than I did about blogging, like Barclay Barrios and Jennifer Bay, but my handout wasn't too bad for the person wanting to know about an overview.