I have a new blog too

Hi, I have been busy adding a calendar and other pages to my wiki. I also added a link to a blog for my journal called Blogginit. I'm not sure if I like blogs yet, I haven't really paid much attention to them until now. I think I like the wiki better, but I will keep that open for now. Does anyone have a strong preference either way? Let me know.

Tom

The Blog Experiment

I decided to create my own (and first!) blog using the website tumblr.com. My brother and my friend from college both utilize this website for blogging. I was always a follower of their pages, but had an anonymous page that I'd never edited. Now, however, I've played around on the site and made my first post. I am going to see if I can track how many people happen to stumble across this blog to get a feel for the universal interconnectivity which blogs provide. In the meantime, I will still be thinking of ways to utilize this blog for my students in the fall.

If you want to check it out, post to it, or provide suggestions for me, please search for me at tumbler.com. The title page is called ENGL 613 and my username is brwadbrook.

Thanks!

Brittany

Blogs

Hi guys! I just wanted to say that I really enjoy blogs - my brother has a really funny one that I am going to post to my wiki (as long as he says it is okay) - but beware! He is very liberal and isn't afaird to show it. I love blogs because I find they are such interesting/informative ways to get information.

I have used blogs in the classroom; I am also going to post a link to my student's blogs that they have done-

happy blogging!
Michelle Eaton

Blogs!

Hi all,

I must say that over and over again, I have attempted to blog about a variety of topics (or nothing at all--see my blogger profile...). I suppose I'm also not able to consistently keep a diary or writing journal, which is a similar daily ritual. I do, however, enjoy reading blogs and admire those that have the fortitude for such a routine. It seems to me that the greatest aspect of a successful blog has nothing to do with the content, of course, but everything to do with carving a niche for a particular subculture, group, or community.

My personal favorites vary very much in their presentation of ideas, images, and dialogues, but they all seem to "click" in a way that has you obsessing over every post from 2001 to the present! At "Return to Sender" my friend Sarah has built up a cohesive community that includes vigorous "comment" sessions (discussions!), frequent posts about contemporary issues in America and around the world, and a specific focus that is witty, critical, and engaging. The format is appealing the the eye, but still direct and informative.

The blogging world also carves out a large piece of the internet for us foodies! The simple design of foodgawker is quite misleading. It is an enormous community blog that features a multitude of foodie pictures, posts, and recipes. I shudder to think of the hours I've spent endlessly scanning their pages.

The best blogs, for me, inspire fresh ideas, unique perspectives, and have a sense of humor. It also seems quite luxurious for people to make their living from this kinds of work. Perhaps the nicest models for this are the ones in which the primary administrator has a great idea...so great that the community that is built around it wants to do the majority of contributing, giving the blog a life of its own. Though I frequently have "good" ideas for blogs, my inability to develop a routine that blocks out the time necessary, makes me hesitant to start anything. But who knows? Maybe this summer?

On not keeping a blog

I've never kept a blog. My husband and I travel a lot (both for academic work and for pleasure), and I've intended to keep a travel blog for our journeys, but have never managed to do so. I do keep journals of sketches and watercolors. And I do take photos, like this one, from a week of walking in the Yorkshire Dales last summer.

I send lengthy emails to a list of friends and family. But I've never put these into a permanent online format. I keep imagining I'll do so in conjunction with this course, but I'm always so busy keeping up with what needs to be done week to week, that I don't get a chance to create anything for myself. Maybe that will have to wait until I really retire. But I do think that a blog would be the right format for what I envision--a series of posts in my voice, chronologically ordered and updated, with photos, or even scans of my sketches and watercolors. And I could post to it from any internet cafe.

I have found blogs to be useful in teaching because they support the voices of individual writers, and there's a link to a blog (with links to student blogs) from a Lifewriting class on the Blackboard site. I've also been using a Wordpress blog to create an Educational Technology Newsletter for UMB. Wordpress lets me manipulate the date of posts, so that I can make them appear in the sequence that I want and with a number of article posts (typically 4 or 5) that will appear on one page, but I think the interface is harder to learn than this one.

Ellie

Welcome Su2010

Make a quick post on the subject of blogs.

New Welcome Su 2009

Welcome to the class blog I've created for En613. You can see a few posts from last year's users.