blogging as a teacher...

Writing short essays in pmachine/blog has a different feel than writing in/for a text document or wiki space. There's something more formal about it, an urge to keep things tidy for those who might look over my shoulder - which could constrain students as much as anything else. But be that as it may...

Look at the possibilities in the layout of the blog:

- students have their own blog to post to. others read and comment. I can read and comment. but the paper isn't marked up - although it can be edited later.
-- this is different than working on a discussion list, which now becomes less significant, especially in face to face situations.

- students learn to write a synopsis in the body section, then place the paper in the More section. they can place entries in different categories. that is, the blog (a least pMachine and a few others) permits *both* the brief entry and longer essay, and permits some student-controlled organization of work.

- the blog can become not only a course space but a student's academic and personal workspace. Then developed, the blog becomes a larger rhetorical framework for the student's writing. See, for instance, Ayleen's [url=http://amlindahl.blogspot.com/]....college life....[/url].

- the layout of the blog looks professional, places student texts in a professional context.

- the layout of the blog - with a calendar, side links, search - helps to review the work either for reflection or for comment.

- students can organize groups to work within a blog on a group project.

- process: student blogs can capture process (as Ayleen does) and so be composed to direct readers/reviewers to notes and reflections on the process. showing process is only potential, however: students must post to process, write and post in order to show their process; and, later, they gain by reflecting on process.

In short, a well-designed blogging framework eases course management by allowing the student to set up the workspace.

Using BlogThis to Update

Being able to add a blog entry to a syllabus blog using BlogThis (or another little blog client) is convenient: no need to update a daily index.html page. The trick is to focus on a page by viewing it and then adding an entry from that page.

So I could suggest that you have a look at Blogs and Wiki: TextFormattingRules to see the changes that have been made recently.

As I've read mentioned, having a blog-like notetaker helps one keep a focus on the task at hand - which raises questions about techniques for writing blog entries with links: how do writers do it? multiple windows open? copying and pasting links? macros? when do they add links (while composing? later?), and how do they decide what to link, and what link text to use?

Snagged from Jef Raskin - Manual v37

EPIGRAPH

It's extremely important to always bear in mind that we are all creatures of habit, down to the most minute detail, so we tend to confuse what is "natural" with what is "comfortable." Things that are comfortable are so almost entirely because we are used to them. When things become habitual through repeated application, they start to feel natural because we can't imagine them any other way; but we have to take a few steps back and objectively reassess what we do in order to find out whether our comfortable habits are actually natural and efficient.

--Murray, Peter. "Essential Bass Technique".
Hal Leonard Corporation, Milwaukee WI 2001
used by the kind permission of Peter Murray

Think of a moment that illustrates when you "stepped back" and "objectively assessed" a situation to decide whether it was a comfortable habit or something natural.

Here's Alan Kay on Squeak in Schools

But there are larger considerations than job and citizen training. These have to do with actualizing the human possibilities that are as yet unrealized in children. With this in mind, we can argue not just for learning to read and write, but for fluent learning, and to be able to read literature and think and write about ideas. This gets to some of the older reasons for education. Deep experiences with deep ideas help grow deep people. And not just deep people, but people who are less easily fooled in a wide variety of areas.

BloggApp

I got an error when posting from blogApp: something about failure to access calstaging. The posting made it through, however, but blogApp froze (wouldn't publish a second posting), and had to be force quit.

As I recall, I had the same problem with an earlier version.

Second post from BlogApp
With the first post, I got an error concerning uploading from blogger to calstaging. I want to see if that's a fluke -

Testing from BlogApp 1.3
Testing this posting from BlogApp 1.3 from webentourage.com. The desktop app makes adds some formatting to OS X that is available on the bookmarklet in windows. It's still a little awkward to use - slightly better than the bookmarklet - but it looks to be worth the $6 just for the spell checking.

If only someone would come up with a faster way of handling links. It's ok to use the tag editor (it makes linking to, say macintouch or my home page easier), but it still requires some dexterity and overhead. Linking is best left until last so as not to break the train of thought.

This blog's days are limited. I will be moving to running pMachine locally.

- easier to integrate with wikis
- more appropriate for educational work (doesn't burden 3rd party providers)
- easier to customize
- more features
- categories
- essay pages
- permalinks

Nearing getting the blogs ready and sorted out:

- Blogs and Wikis Daybook is for collective postings, updates, news for the class.

- course calendar is reserved for official postings from me on the course: what's coming up, what's due...

Still prepping to set up pMachine on an office server.

Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research (1/2) - 16 Dec 2002

a consideration of use of weblogs in research