Another beginning blogger

I recently followed a tweet by @courosa, retweeted by Dean Shareski, to check out a post by Aimee Cronan, who wrote about the challenges of getting started blogging, of self-esteem, of putting her neck out in a potentially hostile blogosphere. I couldn't agree more with what she had to say. And I started replying to her... and I kept on typing - more than I really had intended to. (Especially since I have work I *should* be doing.... Perhaps that is a reason in itself!)

It may be a little hokey. (I have self-esteem issues about my writing, too!) But I thought I would post my reply to her here, as well, in the hopes that it would help me find my way with this and perhaps draw some people to check out her original post.
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I certainly sympathize. I struggle, too, particularly at the early phase - or what I am told is the early phase - when I don't have much readership. It's so easy for people who come in as speakers and talk about these technologies to say how wonderful they are. When a Will Richardson or an Alan November demos how he can ask a question on a blog and within seconds one of his regular readers will answer, it is hard not to feel disenheartened when I write a big, long post, and all I get are cricket noises.
Who, then, is my audience? Is this some sort of ego-trip? Is it worth my time to post again? Is the silence because I am more boring than I realize or because nobody found me? All too often, life gets in the way, and it is weeks or months pass by before I decide I "should" post again. And, starting over, I get the same thing again.
So I have to return to who my audience is. To some extent, I guess I get to decide that myself. I'll invent an audience and speak to them. Ill be as personal as I feel comfortable being, and push myself to be more when I feel up to it. And I'll do what I can to help that audience find me, via twitter or other people's comments (!) And if (when?) nothing happens, I guess I'll keep picking another audience until I find my tungsten and the light goes on and stays for a while.
So, who is my audience? Do they care what I have to say? If not, heck with 'em. I'll make up another one and try a different voice. Will they hate be and flame me with abuse? I doubt I'll be that controversial, but the "delete comment" button is easy enough. (Perhaps you'll use it on this one....)
So, let's be each other's audience today.

Continued observations on beginning student blogging

It's interesting the assumptions we make sometimes. Our school seems dominated by facebook sometimes, and I often expect our H.S. students to be more tech-savvy than they are. I forget sometimes, that things can be new even to them.

For instance, I was going over some first-time blogs from some of our freshmen, and I was surprised to see a few of them that had URLs just written out in the body of the blog. The text wasn't hyperlinked at all, even links to pictures and video were just in the same black text as the rest of the post.

I thought that once they started editing their text they would see the tools at the top of the Blogger editor page and see that they could add those links, pictures and videos in more elegantly.

It is easy to forget that not all of our students take to this stuff instantly. It is new to all of us - even the current "techno-native" generation - once.

I'm such a chicken.

At the last minute, I excised this from one of my comments and said something more innocuous.

"If proofreading were medicine, your posts would need an EMT."

But I WANTED to say it....


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Reflections on student blogging

I am looking back on a three week class that I have just finished teaching, and in which I required my students to blog. (for reference, these were high school boys in a computer class.) Some, but not all, were asking a credit towards a graduation requirement. So, as I compile their grades, I am left reflecting on how blogs worked in my class.

I required the students to blog every day, about what was going on in my class. What they were learning, what they thought was interesting, what they struggled with, what they'd like to know more about. Then, when they started on a project, I asked them to blog about their experience with the project, including what was working, what wasn't, what their plans and surprises were, and what they were working towards.

As a teacher, perhaps I should know better, but I was surprised by how my expectations didn't align with what I got from the kids. Certainly, they participated, and some did quite well, but there were some disappointments, and it is human nature, I guess, for me to dwell on them.

Often, I got pro forma comments. "This is what we were taught in class today." Many students were reluctant to reflect on the class, but rather seemed to just report on it, even after feedback and suggestion with leading questions. ("What was your impression of what was effective -or not- in the class?" "What ideas are you starting to have about the project you are about to do?")

Perhaps expecting teenagers to open up on demand is too much, but a blog that reads like a book report is pretty boring. Still, I can see a student who feels he has something negative to say being pretty reluctant - we've trained them to hold back.

It was also surprisingly difficult to get students to read and comment on each other's blogs. Again, they seemed reluctant to share or give each other feedback. There were exceptions, of course, but it was surprising how resistant they were. If we couldn't even comment on each other's, I didn't see how they would be able to give each other feedback much.

To some extent, I wonder whether this experiment didn't work because it didn't have enough time to work. Maybe once they got into a rhythm, my boys would have opened up and had something to say. Maybe e problem was that they resented being made to blog. Does blogging have to come from the heart to work?

I don't know. It leaves me thinking about what to change for next time.

Another Blogging 101 class

This one's really small, but I'm glad to have an experienced blogger student in my class.

Second Blogging 101 Class

Here we are - in our second Blogging 101 section. So far we have more faculty than students taking this mini-course! (Which is cool in its own way...)

First Blogging 101 class

Wow! We're finally doing it! I'm in the middle of teaching the first class in the Blogging 101 series!

The class went well, and we have two new blogs in the Kinkaid community - both about China.

http://mytripintaiwan2010.blogspot.com/
http://kinkaidchinatrip2011.blogspot.com