Blogs in FYC
From CannedWiki
The contents on this page are from a website I created in 2005 for my sections of English 100 at UW-Madison (I haven't completed the reconstruction from the original site built in Dreamweaver and hosted on the UW's servers). Thanks to Annette Vee and Scot Barnett for lots of collaboration about using blogs for composition.
Contents |
Overview
As we have discussed a bit already, writing—particularly academic writing—is a difficult and often frustrating process. For many of us, sitting down to write an academic essay from scratch becomes an exercise in stress-management as we struggle to “get into the zone” of academic writing. Of course, there are some frustrations that are inherent to the act of writing itself. However, we may begin to minimize our discomfort with writing if we simply commit to writing as often as possible. In these respects, blogging offers us a means to engage writing for multiple purposes and audiences regularly.
Additionally, since we are interested in this course in how writing and communication change across various genre and media—and in fact how technologies enable faster and more expansive connections across spatial and temporal distances—blogging represents a user-friendly space for us to experiment with writing as a digital technology.
Though I understand that blogging will be new to many of you—and even unsettling for some—my advice as a fellow blogger is to relax and have fun with your blog. Blogging will be an important part of the writing you do in this course—in fact, by the end of the semester you will likely have “blogged” more than you have “written” printed academic prose. That said, I urge you to take full advantage of the cooperative learning environment this course promotes to experiment with your blog (and by extension your own writing), to step out of your comfort zones and try out new ideas.
(Blog Assignment Co-developed with Scot Barnett)
What is a Blog?
A “blog” is shorthand for “weblog.” The personal blog is the most common type of blog, in essence a journal kept online and updated regularly to reflect a person’s thoughts and doings. However, the type of blog varies in accordance with the interests and purposes of the blogger(s) and can combine several uses. See a list of possibilities here. For some examples of established academic blogs, check these out:
• Scot Barnett -- (Univ. of WI - Madison grad student • Clancy Ratcliff -- (Univ. of Minn. grad student) • John Hawks – (Univ. of WI-Madison Anthropology Professor)
Why a Blog?
Why would you want to expose yourself to public humiliation? Oh, let me count the reasons!
1. Posting online helps you hone your voice for a public audience: your professional writing won’t be geared towards an audience of one, so why should you practice writing for just me? When I blog, I'm often thinking about how I can make my ideas clear for as many readers as possible.
2. Since blogs aren’t intended to be polished and finished essays, blog posts provide less formal spaces in which to “invent” potential writing projects, to in effect “write your way into” what you think about a specific issue.
I often find that even though I initially intend to write a brief post, I'm surprised by how much I have to say about a particular topic. For instance, one time I wrote nearly 900 words, almost 4 double-spaced pages. I didn't know what I thought until I wrote it.
3. In writing publicly you’ll have conversations with your classmates where you provide and receive feedback on research paper topics, thoughts about class discussions, musings on the football season, etc.
If you look at the books and articles you read for your coursework, you'll usually see a reference, bibliogrpahy, or works cited page. In the academy, the act of citing is in essence a way of carrying on a conversation. Academics read the writing/research/analysis of other academics and respond with their own writing. Students, obviously, don't often have the opportunity to "publish" their ideas, and blogs can be give students this chance to publish and see writing as an opportunity to converse with others.
4. Indeed, the quickest way to become a smarter person is to observe your colleagues’ thinking processes and take mental notes about your own.
5. Regular blogging can help improve your writing and even help you to see the world differently. By way of a testimonial, consider the following from a professor addressing the more subtle (or less academic) benefits of blogging:
"When I discipline myself to post something every day, or as close to it as I can, I find myself watching the world around me slightly differently, and treating my thoughts slightly differently, as though any occurrence or any idea might be capable of blossoming and bearing fruit. When I am not posting, nothing seems worth writing about, just a bunch of dried-up seeds that'll eventually blow away or be eaten by the birds." (Planned Obsolescence)
Starting a Blog
1. Go to the free blog provider of your choice. • Blogsome • Blogger • List of all blog hosts
2. Click on the big orange Create Your Blog Now arrow. It’s easy to get set up. Think of a name for your blog, set up your profile and make it fun if you want to.
3. Email your blog’s address to me.
4. Start posting!
5. I will link to your site from the blog this site and the course blog. Check back frequently to find links to your peers’ blogs.
6. I will check your blog at least once a week and comment on your posts. I will also provide more directed comments and advice on your blogging by way of emails and conferencing.
Guidelines
Specifics:
1. Set up your blog and profile by Friday, January 27. (Email your URL to me before class on Friday). By Friday, also post your first entry to your blog!
2. Make your first comment to 3 posts by Monday, January 30. When you comment on a peer’s blog, be sure to include your name so the blogger knows who’s commenting. (Including a link to your own blog in the comment itself is a popular, and useful, convention in the blogosphere.). You must respond to a new set of blogs each week. Keep track.
3. Original entries will be due each Friday and responses are due each Monday. (Note about due times: I’ll probably check the blogs each weekend, but to be safe, have your post done by class time on those days.)
Other guidelines:
• GRADING STANDARDS: I’d like for you to take ownership of your blog. In other words, I want you to feel free to use that space to engage writing at various levels and with various intentions. That being said, I’ll be looking for at least one post per week that addresses “something” related to English 100. This may include questions or reflections on course readings, class discussions, etc; musings on the process of writing itself; thoughts about blogging; reflections on your own writing and writing processes; thoughts or questions about potential paper topics and the research process in general; and/or any other issues relevant to the study or practice of writing. Feel free otherwise to use your blog as a personal journal, a photo collage of the first-year college experience, etc. There will also be times when I ask you to blog about something in particular.
• CITE those whom you quote and with whom you converse. Through the magic of hyperlinks, you can connect directly to any of your peers’ blogs, etc.
• THINK ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE. You’re still writing for me for your fellow students. But bear in mind that eventually the larger public might begin Googling its way to your blog.
Rationale for Using Blogs in FYC
1) Blogs as spaces for learning to write:
NCTE “Beliefs about Writing” #2: People learn to write by writing.
“As is the case with many other things people do, getting better at writing requires doing it -- a lot. This means actual writing, not merely listening to lectures about writing, doing grammar drills, or discussing readings. The more people write, the easier it gets and the more they are motivated to do it. Writers who write a lot learn more about the process because they have had more experience inside it. Writers learn from each session with their hands on a keyboard or around a pencil as they draft, rethink, revise, and draft again. Thinking about how to make your writing better is what revision is. In other words, improvement is built into the experience of writing.”
AND
“Writing instruction must include ample in-class and out-of-class opportunities for writing and should include writing for a variety of purposes and audiences.” Frequent Blogging = lots of writing. One student wrote over . . . this semester.
2) Blogs as tools for thinking:
NCTE “Beliefs about Writing” #4: Writing is a tool for thinking.
"When writers actually write, they think of things that they did not have in mind before they began writing. The act of writing generates ideas. This is different from the way we often think of writers -- as getting ideas fixed in their heads before they write them down. The notion that writing is a medium for thought is important in several ways. It suggests a number of important uses for writing: to solve problems, to identify issues, to construct questions, to reconsider something one had already figured out, to try out a half-baked idea. This insight that writing is a tool for thinking helps us to understand the process of drafting and revision as one of exploration and discovery, and is nothing like transcribing from pre-recorded tape. The writing process is not one of simply fixing up the mistakes in an early draft, but of finding more and more wrinkles and implications in what one is talking about.”
3) Blogs as writing/thinking communities:
NCTE “Myths about Writing” #8: Good writers work alone.
“There's probably a good writer somewhere who likes to write in a quiet closet. But most writers today are people who work in busy offices or classrooms, and who write with frequent input from their coworkers and peers. Young writers learn even more when they are part of a "community" of others —sharing ideas, asking questions, and revising their writing.”
4) Blogs as opportunities to composing in multiple modalities with technology:
NCTE “Beliefs about Writing” #10: Composing occurs in different modalities and technologies.
"Increasingly, rapid changes in technologies mean that composing is involving a combination of modalities, such as print, still images, video, and sound. Computers make it possible for these modalities to combine in the same work environment. Connections to the Internet not only make a range of materials available to writers, they also collapse distances between writers and readers and between generating words and creating designs. Print always has a visual component, even if it is only the arrangement of text on a page and the type font. Furthermore, throughout history, print has often been partnered with pictures in order to convey more meaning, to add attractiveness, and to appeal to a wider audience. Television, video, and film all involve such combinations, as do websites and presentation software. As basic tools for communicating expand to include modes beyond print alone, “writing” comes to mean more than scratching words with pen and paper. Writers need to be able to think about the physical design of text, about the appropriateness and thematic content of visual images, about the integration of sound with a reading experience, and about the medium that is most appropriate for a particular message, purpose, and audience."
In addition to hyperlinking, blogs allow students to add audio and visual elements to their sites/posts.
