May 15, 2007
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I should’ve gotten grades all wrapped up last week. What was I thinking? Oh yea, I was thinking about the MSUM conference. And it’s a good thing I took time out (which means procrastinating grading – yea!) to get prepared for that conference because I feel that, honestly, it was one of my best yet.
I had printed out what I wanted to say, but I didn’t refer to it much. I made some people giggle, I made some significant points about blogs (I think), and I feel it was deeper than other blogging sessions I have been to in the past. Usually, like at the Pop Culture conference, researchers or new bloggers are still looking at how to use them/how they fit into pedagogy/what their benefits are and I have already started hunting within the posts to find out what is really there.
Later, in another blogging session yesterday, a political science teacher referred to the student blog posts as stream-of-consciousness. I don’t think he meant it in an all-bad way, but it wasn’t “right” to me since I have found just as much complexitiy in class blog posts as I have in the students’ papers. So, I guess that just leads me to PROVING that. And I have already talked about it with Wade – coding eCollege posts this coming fall & letting students know up front that I’ll be coding their writing just like I did with the BisonBlog. And I’ll have to code papers too. I am really interested in this. Maybe because I can prove that others’ side comments about blogs are just not backed up. Has anyone done research like mine showing that, in fact, student blogs are full of errors or just aren’t as complex? I don’t know. I suppose that’s another search I need to do online.
But first, I have to implement del.icio.us into my life. That session (by one of MSUM’s librarians?) was amazing! Finally, my iMac at home and my office computer can contain the same bookmarks & research. Excellent!
