Public, Private, Political: Social Theories and Blogging Practices (Jerz’s CCCC 05 Notes) The first panel I attended, Wednesday evening. Lanette Cadle, Bowling Green State University, presented “Their Own Space: Adolescent Girls and the Personal Weblog.” “At Livejournal, girls rule.” 67% are women, and the site features over 2 million active blogs. Yet women are under-represented in…
Calling All Bloggers — Friday Special Interest Group (Jerz’s CCCC 05 Notes) Friday evening’s “Calling all Bloggers” special interest group, organized by Charles Lowe, was an energetic and productive hour. I facilitated a breakout session on institutional blogging, where we discussed ways that blogs might be useful for building an instructional archive to be used by…
Finally getting around to blogging some notes about sessions I’ve attended. I don’t know if the overall quality of the conference has improved or if I just really know how to pick ’em, but all the sessions I’ve attended so far have been great. The first session I attended was “Evaluating Academic Weblogs: Using Empirical…
Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle — a way for executives to demonstrate their casual, interactive side. But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained —…
A Blogger Went to CCCC… And Here’s What He Did CCCC (Jerz’s CCCC 05 Notes) The challenging acoustics in the Moscone Center seemed to work in Douglas Dean Hesse’s favor, as he opened his keynote, “Who Owns Writing?” by belting out an African-American spiritual. During the opening session, when Sharon Mitchler asked attendees who are affiliated…
Our students, especially the ones who are required to be in our classes and are, therefore, required to blog or do whatever else we ask of them, are generally going to be concerned about the grade they get – possibly even more concerned about the grade than about what they learn. —Nancy McKeand —Evaluating Blogging (Random…
Blogging clearly isn’t going to help that proportion of people who aren’t really up to their job, or who are prone to inarticulate flaming, or both. But then, those people tend to have career problems anyhow. Put it another way: not blogging won’t protect you from career-limiting moves, and if blogging provokes one, well, you…
Oh blog, me, babe! Don’t miss a word of it! Many a blog has brought love to my door Netted by sparkling poem, or flash of wit – The chatroom kind, of course, and little more. What need of tangled flesh on messy dates The weight of expectation as it starts Its gentle journey southwards,…
Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst at the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said employees often “don’t realize the First Amendment doesn’t protect their job.” The First Amendment only restricts government control of speech. So private employers are free to fire at will in most states, as long as it’s not discriminatory or in retaliation…
There’s certainly nothing new about student blogs – there are millions of them floating in cyberspace. What separates these online journals from the rest of the pack is that they are university sponsored and featured prominently on a school’s admissions pages. These journals are photo heavy and focus on a few events every few weeks.…
—Drive-by Blogging (Google) Weblog portfolios are due soon, so there’s more activity than usual on my students’ weblogs. Moira mentioned that fellow student Evan Reynolds had used the term “drive-by blogging” to describe the sudden rush of blog entries that fill in the gaps and fulfill the requrements of the weblog portfolio assignment. That was a…
A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of “web log.”) Until recently, I…
Checkmate in Four (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) My seven-year-old son whipped my butt in chess last night. He’s beaten me before… once when I was paying attention to fending off an attack deep in my territory, and he suddenly popped his rook out from behind a row of pawns, pinning down my king. I’m embarrassed to say…
And so the darkness touches the links, and the darkness tastes their power, and the darkness broods and breeds in its desire. The dragon of the night rises, corporations tangled in its wings. It leaves the links powerless, the search-engines crippled, and the readers lost as the rankings swell like rivers and the paths of…
Several events have sparked a debate about whether an ethical threshold has been crossed: the decision by Marqui, a company in Vancouver, to pay bloggers to mention the company; Newsweek‘srevelation that a group of 100 technologists in Silicon Valley accepts free products and services in return for word-of-mouth endorsements (or not); and the news that…
It is not true that there are no controls. It is not true that the blogosphere is the Wild West. What governs members of the blogosphere is what governs to some degree members of the MSM, and that is the desire for status and respect. In the blogosphere you lose both if you put forward…
Many thanks for responding to my brief survey. My name is Ashley Holmes, and I am conducting some descriptive research as part of my M.A. thesis in composition under the direction of Dr. Chris Anson at NC State University. Most of my work has involved collecting and describing cases of blogs used for the teaching…
—Wahoooooo! We’re off and blogging, getting er done! (John Haddad) One of my students demonstrates his enthusiasm for a new semester of blogging. Similar:Plato's Allegory of the CaveIn The Republic, Plato uses an extended …AcademiaWhen the Reporter Becomes Part of the Story (Aggressive Reporter Covering Pittsburgh Zoo D…Students who are new to journalism often…AcademiaI was 'raped'…
blogs.setonhill.edu Hacked (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Many of the pages on the blogs.setonhill.edu website have been taken over. As far as I can tell, the blogs are operating correctly and the data are all safe, but the hack is taking over the display. Very frustrating, I am sure, for SHU bloggers. I’m seeking help right now. Update:…
Deni Rust, 34, of McCandless, continued her husband’s journal after his death, using the Web site he created to immortalize his writings, to establish a guest book where friends and family can share memories, and to post her thoughts as each day passes. A year later, Deni Rust still struggles to live with her grief.…