Reviving This Blog

I've felt rather conscience-stricken over the past few months -- actually, ever since I finished Bill's course last year -- about how little I've been doing with this blog. I haven't quite known what I could usefully be doing with it, especially since so many of our number now meet and chat on Twitter. But now I've had an idea.

I've been thinking hard over the past few weeks about what we can do in response to the student satisfaction agenda. This is clearly an issue which is going to become even more pressing over the next few years, as fees increase and humanities departments such as our own come under more and more pressure. It's also clearly not the kind of problem which is amenable to being 'solved' in any straightforward way. But there are things we can do.

One thing I plan to experiment with over the next few weeks is using my office notice board a bit more imaginatively. Colour. Pictures. Chat. Something very like blogging, in fact.

I haven't quite worked out all the details, and one thing I'm especially concerned about is how long this activity is going to take. So it may prove to be a rather shortlived experiment. But I'm planning to start this week, and will hope to merge the hard-copy blog with this online version. So you may soon start seeing more activity on this site. Well, maybe.

I'm still here

OL has asked elsewhere how often you need to blog in order to count as an active blogger. I agree with his suggestion of about once a week ... but with the emphasis very much on 'about'.

Oddly, the end of semester seems to have brought me more deadlines rather than fewer. But I'm hoping that after tomorrow the fog will begin to clear, and then I will be fully back online.

I do mean to continue blogging even now that the Web 2.0 course has ended, and will -- of course! -- blog about why and how I want to do this.

How Green is Web 2.0?

One issue I don't think we've addressed so far is the environmental implications of Web 2.0 and associated technologies.

This is a matter which exercises me quite a lot -- though I don't want to sound as if I'm trying to be greener-than-thou about it. We all have to have computers for our work: and if you've got all that expensive hardware on hand then it makes sense to get as much use out of it as possible. Similarly, I accept the argument that the virtual communication facilitated by new technology can cut down on unnecessary travelling and paper use (providing we're disciplined about such things as not printing emails).

What concerns me more is all the gadgets one can use in conjunction with Web 2.0 technologies, and their built-in obsolescence. I already have a PDA that I can't fully use any more because it's not compatible with Vista (and making it compatible is beyond my technical abilities). It took me a long time to decide to get an IPod and a digital camera: in each case I wanted one, but wasn't sure -- especially after the PDA experience -- that I would use it enough to justify the purchase. I now sometimes think I'd like an IPhone, but -- similarly -- don't feel that I can really justify depleting the planet's resources that little bit more.

This debate in my head has also been made more complicated by the fact that the IPod -- which I acquired only last autumn -- has proved to be an unexpected delight and has enriched my day to day life to a surprising extent. And I have also taken to carrying my digital camera around everywhere in case I see something good for this blog. Who said 'Enjoy blogging, but don't let it rule your life'?

But what do other people think about the green implications of what we're doing? This really does worry me.

Publicity and Privacy

Many of us first-time bloggers have been much exercised by the issue of how much information we should be willing to disclose about ourselves on a publicly-accessible blog. Some of the others in the Tuesday group may recall that I quickly had second thoughts about the name I had chosen for my blog, once I realized how transparent it was and how readily I could be identified as its author. When I looked into the possibility of changing the name, though, it turned out to be more complicated than I’d expected, largely because so many of you had generously linked to my blog one way or another. It looked as if, even if I changed the name on my own site, the original name would leave traces elsewhere. This made the change seem pointless.

So I’ve kept the name, in all its transparency, and have since come to the conclusion that having a readily identifiable name is not necessarily a bad thing. The fact that I know that a reasonably knowledgeable reader could work out my identity very quickly means that I have an extra incentive to be quite circumspect in what I say here. If I thought my blog was safely anonymous, I might be much more indiscreet, which might then prove to be embarrassing if my identity were decoded by the wrong person.

The rule of thumb I have developed is that I should be willing to divulge on my blog anything I would be prepared to say to a well-informed student who’d expressed an interest. One of the things I find most attractive about blogs is the opportunity they provide for you to ruminate in (semi) public, thinking over the issues and – if you’re lucky – stimulating comments from others with similar interests. I am not interested in writing a blog which is just a dull stream of facts. The introspective aspect of the form is one of its chief advantages, in my view. But this, for me, has to be an introspection within limits.

Which is why I am prepared to say on my blog (but to say no more than this) that the reason I have not blogged for over a week is that I have been having family difficulties. I have been trying not to let these difficulties get in the way of my work, and the blogging, I’m afraid, has been the first casualty. I still see it as expendable – something I do for fun. It has not yet become central either to my teaching or my research.

Note that I say ‘yet’.

Advice to a Blogger

(1) Set yourself some ground rules at the start.
(2) Review the ground rules regularly. Are you keeping them? If not, what should change: the rules or your blogging practice?
(3) Blog regularly, but don't let it dictate your life.
(4) Tell friends you're blogging and encourage them to comment. When they do, you'll get a huge lift.
(5) Add pictures if you can. That will cheer your blog up considerably.
(6) Try to be self-aware but not solipsistic.
(7) Enjoy yourself.

Blogs and Learning

This is really the nub of the issue for many of us. How can blogs be used to help learning and teaching? Last year I tried to use my discussion board on Web CT to stimulate discussion among my first-year students. Each week I would post up a question such as 'What do you think seminars are for?', 'How do you take lecture notes?' or 'What do you think makes a good essay?', and encouraged the students to post up answers. My hope was that thinking through answers to questions like these would help them to make the adjustment from school to university expectations and norms. It worked to some extent, but I was rather disappointed that the students tended to direct their answers towards me, rather than getting into debate with one another. I was still pleased enough with the experience to try again this year; but the problems with Web CT at the beginning of October were such that I just gave up and haven't tried again.

I still think that something like this could work, but I increasingly feel that the rigid and clunky structure of Web CT doesn't facilitate good discussion. (And here's one benefit of this course already for me: I hadn't realised quite how clunky Web CT was until I saw how much more straightforward and user-friendly a blog can be.) So perhaps it would be easier on a blog. But encouraging student participation would still be a challenge.

Blogging: What can go wrong?

Lots, of course. Here's one blog I find mildly irritating: http://bloggingtherenaissance.blogspot.com/. I hoped it would do what it says on the tin: and it doesn't. Or at least, it doesn't as much as I would like it to. And I don't quite share the sense of humour. I'll keep the URL on my favourites, but I'm not tempted to subscribe.

Blogs I Read (2)

Slugger O'Toole, mentioned in a previous posting, is one of several Irish and Northern Irish sites I read regularly. Another is Will Crawley's blog, 'Will and Testament' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/) which is ethics- and culture-based and links to a weekly programme Crawley presents on Radio Ulster. I get the podcast of the programme as well.

The other blogs I'm reading regularly at the moment (and have now added to my Google Reader) are Alex Ross's (http://www.therestisnoise.com/) and a foodie site, http://eattherightstuff.squarespace.com/blog/. The Alex Ross site connects with a book of the same name on twentieth-century classical music. I was given the book as a Christmas present, read it in January, but didn't discover the blog until afterwards. This is a pity, since the site includes a number of soundfiles (of out-of-copyright recordings) intended to be listened to in conjunction with Ross's descriptions in the book. I wish I'd known this in time to take advantage.

As for eattherightstuff, I discovered it by accident last week when I googled for a recipe for butternut squash risotto. I must be getting more used to this blogging business, for I even posted a comment on the site, asking the blogger, Abby, about possible substitutes for double cream in another of her recipes. And she wrote back! It's a start, at least.

By their blogs, you shall know them.

Blogs I Read (1)

I am originally from Northern Ireland, and I like to keep in touch with what's going on back at home. I used to read a satirical website called The Portadown News (now decommissioned: see http://www.portadownnews.com/finalnotice.htm), and one time, when I didn't understand an allusion on TPN, I googled for the answer. This led me to Slugger O'Toole (http://www.sluggerotoole.com/), to which I have ever since been addicted. Slugger, subtitled 'Notes on Northern Ireland Politics and Culture', is one of the liveliest blogs I know of, with several new postings every day and comments sometimes running into the hundreds. I enjoy it enormously and have learnt a lot from it, but have never yet commented on any of the postings. This is probably, in part, because I don't (yet) have the interactive mentality. It is also because Slugger, like many political blogs, strikes me as a very male environment and I feel more comfortable there as a reader than as an active participant.

Worries about this blog

Ali has talked on her blog about the misgivings she felt in advance about getting involved in blogging. One of my own misgivings has always been a worry about time-wasting. I started reading blogs about four years ago (I'll write about this in another post), and would hate to add up all the time I've spent on blog sites since then. On the plus side, I do think I've gained a lot of useful knowledge, and the insight into other perspectives on the world has been fascinating. But then there are the opportunity costs -- all the other things I might have been doing instead. I just heard a few minutes ago about someone who's been learning Arabic in her lunch hour. Could I have learnt (even basic) Arabic in all the time I've spent on other people's blogs?

Right now, like most academics, I'm worrying about now getting time for research. Spending time writing my blog is almost inevitably going to take up valuable research time (since admin. and teaching deadlines are usually much harder to ignore). So ... I guess you can see where this is going: be prepared for some research-related blogging on this site! Two birds, one stone. (Or the humane equivalent, whatever it is.)