Weblogs: November 2005 Archive Page

Blogs are the latest form of electronic information that law enforcement is examining as part of investigations, and experts predict they'll become even more relevant as their popularity grows.

"We have to look at that as a new medium to solve crimes," said Cmdr. Christopher Vicino of the Pasadena, Calif., police department. "We would be able to use them, not so much as evidence, but more for investigative leads." --Catherine Donaldson-Evans --Today's Gumshoes Dust for Fingerprints, Then Read Blogs (Fox News)

Suggested by Megan Ritter.

Turning to a few student samples we can see this concept exemplified even more. Below is a quote from one of Dennis Jerz's students. This is one of the student's first postings, and you can see his/her enthusiasm about designing and creating a blog.

September 08, 2004: LOOK AT ME, I HAVE A BLOG!

I have a blog now. My very own. It's like a baby -- mine to mold, change, and create. Hundreds of people (or in my case, about 5) will be able to see my writings. People from other countries even. Hola! Bonjour! Guten Tag! foreign peoples! I think I may have become addicted though. I just found out how to personalize and change the colors. Now, every free moment I have will be spent changing colors and making the blog uniquely me. Homework? Who needs homework? I have to work on my blog. (Special K)

This student seems to be aware of, probably because Jerz emphasized to his students, the public nature of the weblog: "Hundreds of people... will be able to see my writings. People from other countries even." However, what is even more intriguing is that the student states in parentheses "(or in my case, about 5)," which would seem to indicate that he/she does not think many people will be reading her blog. --Ashley Joyce Holmes --Web Logs in the Post-Secondary Writing Classroom: A Study of Purposes (PDF) (North Carolina State University)

This was a pleasant find -- an NCSU master's thesis that analyzes the use of web logs in higher education. I think I'll throw a few quotes from this into my next annual review.

I'm much better at simply showing people what blogs are all about, so I appreciated Holmes' careful description of precisely how a blog works. I might use a section of this dissertation the next time I teach Writing for the Internet.

My student Vanessa Kolberg is the "Special K" blogger. The paper mentions her name correctly, but the URL given in the Works Cited list is wrong. It should be "http://blogs.setonhill.edu/VanessaKolberg".

Each of the following uses a weblog or content management system to manage the site and/or really breaks traditional conventions in other ways, changing the way that the teacher establishes their professional ethos in comparison to the more traditional forms seen above. --Example Instructor Professional Home Pages (Introductory Composition at Purdue: Technical Mentoring)

Just doing a little egosurfing to remind myself that I do have a professional identity that extends beyond circling punctuation errors. No classes today, but I went into the office anyway and marked papers for seven hours.

Not done yet, so it's back to work. But first, maybe I'll crush Rome in Civilization III.

I'm back! (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Last Friday afternoon, my site went down. Trying to access the homepage yielded a message that the owner of the site should contact billing@[ISP]. I assumed that there was a mix-up in terms of paying our ISP for the next year of hosting, but our billing people say that we paid the bill on time.

During this time, I was able to access my files via ftp and SSH (geekier ways of accessing files, not involving web browsers), so I knew the site was still there and the data files were safe.

About a half hour ago, I noticed that my site was still accessible under a different URL -- the URL my ISP first gave me, before the domain name servers picked up "jerz.setonhill.edu" and started pointing web surfers to hosting company's computer.

SHU's webmaster Jess Turner did his webmasterful magic, found that our ISP has moved to a new IP address (the sequence of numbers that identifies each individual unique connectio to the internet).

So now I'm back in business. Hurrah for Jess!

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed or called me to let me know the site was down.

My student weblogs were unaffected by this problem, which was a good thing, since this is a stressful time of year and I would hate to give them one more thing to worry about.