Category: Blogging about blogging

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Misc. Post

I’ve been meaning to post about a variety of different things lately, but I’ve gotten a bit behind with school things (though I am about to come ’round the corner, too– I can sense it). So what I’m doing to do instead is post a few quick comments and links and such and let the chips where they may.

  • On the way home yesterday, I thought about what would happen if (for next year) I abandoned the eCollege software for teaching online and tried to do the whole thing myself with Moodle or Drupal or something. What would be lost? What would be gained? Would the powers-that-be at EMU be annoyed with me? Hmmm….
  • My routine has been thrown off by fund-raising time at public radio. Don’t get me wrong– I understand why they need to do it, and I am indeed a member of my favorite public radio station, WEMU. But I just find it annoying. So please, if you listen, give what you can so they can get back on with it.
  • Johndan observes that Apple computer controls are for lefties. He blames this on the mac, but aren’t the common short-cut commands for the PC (alt-x, alt-v, alt-c) all on the left too? Having this, I must say he might have a point. The touchpad on my laptop has been a problem for a while now, so I’ve been using a mouse, and the USB port is… on the left. But since I’m left-handed, this is totally okay with me.
  • Via Weblogg-ed cmes this article, “Web logs go to school” on C|Net News. com. It’d be interesting to share this piece side-by-side with the bad press that things like Xanga have been getting in high schools lately.
  • Speaking of which, via an email that Rich Rice sent to Tech-Rhet, I’ve learned that at least one school, Santa Clara University, is using the student blog angle in order to help market itself. Granted, Santa Clara U is a tad different from, say, EMU (SCU bills itself as “The Jesuit University of Silicon Valley”), but it’s interesting nonetheless.
  • Jenny Edbauer wrote about two interesting and free applications. First, there is a blog software called Blogsome, which gives users Word Press-like features. It’s worth thinking about instead of Blogger, that’s for sure (btw, now even Blogger is having spam problems! Is Word Press the last blogging software that seems to not have significant issues with this stuff?). Second, there’s Jot, which is another free wiki software. I’d like to compare it with PBwiki before using it, but I suspect that Wikis will play a role in my Writing for the World Wide Web class next time around.

Okay, enough catch-up with the blog. Time to catch up with the other things in life.

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"UnGoogleable"/Disappearing from the Web (not)

Jill has a useful post that has some good discussion and a couple of good links about trying to “disconnect” from the Web. Sorta.

  • First, there’s this Wired News article, ”UnGoogleables’ Hide From Search.” I think the headline makes it pretty clear what this is about; the Wired News article also has some very good links to previous Google-oriented articles, which makes me think that Google and its ilk might be a prominent topic of discussion in one or more of my classes in the Winter term.
  • The second link is to Michael Joyce’s web page, where he announces “Michael Joyce is no longer maintaining a public web presence.” Of course, he goes on to provide a bunch of links and even a CV that includes an email address, an office address, and an office phone number. In other words, Joyce’s “lack” of a web presence is significantly greater than the eb presence of most of my colleagues.

Personally, I am at a state in my career/life where I very much want people to find me via a Google search. I don’t see what the problem is. I do understand the privacy issues and I agree that there are some things about me that I don’t want to be out there for one and all to see, but go ahead and read my blogs, look at my class pages, etc.

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Fun with Safari and RSS Feeds

Instead of doing something I should be doing but I don’t want to do right now (e.g., grading essays), I think I finally figured out how to use the RSS feed feature that comes built into Mac browser Safari. It’s a pretty handy feature, although I do have two minor problems. First off, it seems a bit buggy to me. I’m not completely sure about why, but it seems like it doesn’t want to list all of the articles that would be in the feed. Second, I wish this was actually a feature that was in my prefered browswer (and the browser that works better with WordPress), Firefox. But it does what an RSS feed is supposed to do: it allows me to skim the headlines of a whole bunch of blogs while I’m drinking coffee in the morning.

In the course of reading my RSS feed the other day and looking at an entry that Collin had about Web 2.0 identity issues (and I think that Jeff has a good point on this stuff), I came across an entry from Random Tech Notes, “Web 2.0: Does RSS Decrease Page Views?” Here’s a snippet:

First, lower page view counts mean less ad revenue. Second, the importance of site layout and HTML may diminish somewhat. I suspect sites interested in making any ad revenue at all will begin providing headlines-only for their RSS feeds, but this won’t entirely eliminate the page count degradation problem.

This is all very good for the reader – you can now find things faster and spend less unproductive time browsing, if you so choose. But if you’re a web site operator who derives most of your revenue from ad dollars generated by HTML page views or clicks, I think you’re going to be in for a surprise as RSS uptake increases.

The first point– lower page views and less ad revenue– of course only matters if you are in this stuff for the money. Right now, none of the sites in my feed are money making ventures, though I might be adding things like boing-boing to my list soon.

The issues about layout and design are more significant, I think. It means that it probably isn’t worth a huge amount of time and work to put together a really snazzy layout for your blog because people come to your site via a headline. And if we’re all going to be reading each others’ blogs with various RSS feed tools and I’m going to be using tools on my computers that deliever the content with the look that I want, then we’re back to the power of the word. What will get a reader interested in my blog is a good headline and a snappy opening sentence or two.

And, in a weird way, doesn’t this move us away from “visual rhetoric” and just back to good ol’ fashion “words in a row” rhetoric? Hmmmm….

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If Academic Blogging is a Carnival, Where's the Cotton Candy?

I don’t have a lot of time to write about this now (I’m way behind on my grading), but I’d highly recommend the CHE article “The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas” by Henry “his real name” Farrell, who is himself a member of the Crooked Timber blogging collective.

It’s a great piece. After a few opening paragraphs where I thought Farrell was going to go down the really tired pseudoanonymous blogger argument thing again, he gets into swing with an argument that I and plenty of other academic bloggers have made for a while now: “blogging isn’t a hobby; it’s an integral part of their scholarly identity” and blogging should have some place in the realm of academic publishing. Here’s a longer quote:

Why are so many academics beginning to blog? Academic blogs offer the kind of intellectual excitement and engagement that attracted many scholars to the academic life in the first place, but which often get lost in the hustle to secure positions, grants, and disciplinary recognition. Properly considered, the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today. Academic blogs, like their 18th-century equivalent, are rife with feuds, displays of spleen, crotchets, fads, and nonsenses. As in the blogosphere more generally, there is a lot of dross. However, academic blogs also provide a carnival of ideas, a lively and exciting interchange of argument and debate that makes many scholarly conversations seem drab and desiccated in comparison. Over the next 10 years, blogs and bloglike forms of exchange are likely to transform how we think of ourselves as scholars. While blogging won’t replace academic publishing, it builds a space for serious conversation around and between the more considered articles and monographs that we write.

Right. And that’s what we’ve been saying for years now. I’m just glad that Farrell said it as well as he did and that the CHE published it. Go read it; you’ll be glad you did.

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Blogging and "academic branding"

I’ve read and read about the Chronicle of Higher Education article “Master (or Mistress) of Your Domain” by Michael J. Bugeja in a couple of different places, but I like the way John talks about the article here. I disagree with the presumption that Bugeja is making about what it takes to become an associate or full professor, to be “nationally recognized,” because the majority of colleges and universities are not tier 1 research facilities and thus have different standards for tenure.

But I do agree (obviously) that it’s a good idea for academics to have a web site and to even think about investing in your very own domain name. I’ve been darn happy with stevendkrause.com. Sure, I have to pay a little money out of pocket, but it’s much more reliable service than EMU’s servers and I can pretty much do whatever I want with it. Personally, I think it’s the best $40 or $50 a year I spend.

Slight update:

Oh yeah– Like Collin, I too think that Bugeja’s self-promotion is kinda creepy and slimy-sounding. I do think it’s important for academics to do self-promotion, something that I think many folks (including me) are kind of reluctant to do. On the other hand, Bugeja has probably gone a wee-bit too far here.

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What academic blogging means to me (and what it is likely to mean in the coming year or so…)

As I mentioned the other day, Alex and Collin both had some very good and reflective posts about the reasons for academic blogging. Good posts. Go read them.

For me, keeping an academic blog has been useful and satisfying for all kinds of different reasons. I use this blog space to kind of keep notes and make links for myself (for teaching, for scholarship), my blog is a way making connections with other scholarly-types, I like the immediacy of blogging, I like the control I have, and I like the attention, modest though it may be. This is just a guess, but I’m pretty sure that more people read my blog every month than have ever read my more “real” scholarly publications.

In fact, I for one am likely to write even more on my scholarly blog and even less in more conventional outlets, at least for the next year or two. Why? Because I can.

See, in the next week or two, I should be will be as done as I am likely to get with a textbook project that I’ve been working on (and off and on) for years now. That’s the kind of project that will make you want to take a “break,” believe me.

Plus I’m in a comfortable and “settled” space life and career-wise. I’ve been tenured for a while now, and, because of the way things work at EMU, I will almost certainly be promoted again to “Professor” in a few years based on the work I’ve already done. My wife, Annette Wannamaker, is going to be starting a position in the department here at EMU as an assistant professor, specializing in Children’s Literature. This situation– both of us employed in good tenure-track positions that allow us to live in the same house like “normal” couples– has been something we’ve been working to achieve for almost 10 years now. We’re darn happy about it and because of this arrangement and the difficulty in getting this deal in the first place, I seriously doubt that we’ll be leaving EMU (which means we won’t be “going on the market” again, which we’re pretty darn happy about, too).

In other words, I’ve reached a point in my career where I don’t have to play the usual “publish or perish” games. And because of that, why not just blog?

Of course, my situation is a bit unique and perhaps different from a lot of other bloggers out there. It seems to me that grad students and tenure-seeking faculty need to make some careful decisions about blogging, about what to write or not write (I’m thinking here of the need to avoid posting things to a blog that might hurt future or on-going employment), and about how much and how often to write. Collin says that blogging is something that has helped him with his other academic writings, but I think I tend to agree with Alex when he writes:

You don’t give up other scholarly pursuits completely to go “all in� on blogging (or, at least, most don’t). But the truth is, rather than writing this entry, I could be working on a half-dozen other projects that would actually show up on a vita. The direct payout is not at all clear.

And again, by “direct payout,” I think what Alex means is stuff that will count in the academic game of getting a tenure-track job, getting tenured or getting a better academic job, getting promoted, etc.

For me, blogging is a benefit in and of itself. But I also see it as a dangerous procrastination activity. In the time I have spent this morning on this entry, I could have (probably should have) gotten some more work done on my textbook. Which is what I think I’ll go do right now…

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Grade school podcasting (and other technologies, too…)

From Canada’s Globe and Mail web site comes this article, “Web logs, podcasts and virtual classrooms.” Really interesting piece. Two quick highlights:

The “Room 208” podcast may just have the youngest production staff in the history of broadcasting. Written, produced and performed entirely by the third- and fourth-graders in Bob Sprankle’s class at the Wells Elementary School in Wells, Maine, the podcast — an on-line radio show that can be downloaded to an MP3 player — began in April, has 171 subscribers for its weekly 20- to 30-minute shows and includes regular features like Student News, The Week in Sports and Word of the Week.

and…

When Joel Arquillos, a social studies teacher at the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco, started his 11th-grade American history students blogging, he didn’t know what to expect. Mr. Arquillos set up a group blog as a joint project with David Boardman’s English class juniors and seniors from rural Winthrop High School in Maine for students to post assignments on-line, comment on each other’s work and expand their cultural awareness.

At first, the students needed to be prodded to post. But the blog took off when Mr. Arquillos had them write about their neighbourhoods. A student who lives in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco described her feelings about the drug dealing and gang violence in the neighbourhood. The Maine students posted that they had thought neighbourhoods like the Tenderloin were urban legends.

Soon, the students started posting on their own to find out what their peers cross-country thought about various subjects (the structure of the new SATs, good reasons to skip the prom, among many), discussions that almost came to match the assigned writings in volume.

“I want to give these kids the tools to say, ‘Hey, my voice is important in this world,”‘ Mr. Arquillos said after the year-long experiment. “This blog helps me do that.”

Hey, how cool is that, huh?

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Blog ads as ironic comment? or just out of the blogger's control?

While procrastinating this afternoon, I stopped by Bitch Ph.D., a blog I look at once in a while just to see what sort of thing she and her colleagues are writing about. I often agree, I often don’t, and I often think that she’s sharing, ah, a bit too much information of the sort that fuels the fires of the Ivan Tribbles of the world.

Anyway, I noticed that she’s sporting a new look on her blog and that includes blog ads on the far right column. Now, I like money as much as the next person (even though a lot of academic-types would prefer to not admit this), and I’ve wondered about the idea of putting up ads on this site. I honestly have no idea how much money I could make off of it, but if I were to clear say $50 a year for leasing the space, that would pay my annual icdsoft bill.

The problem though, as I think is evident with Bitch Ph. D.’s site, is it appears that you have little control of the ads themselves. At least I think that’s the case. For example, on Bitch Ph. D.’s site (at least when I checked it now), there were two ads, one urging people to sign an electronic petition to approve John Robert’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the other for a pro-life group, that seem to me to be at odds with the sort of ideas that are being promoted in the content of the site.

I have no idea how these ads came to be on this site; maybe it is based on sites that bubble up in Google’s rankings for searches on “John Roberts” or “Pro-Life.” And I have no idea how the Bitch Ph. D. crowd feels about these ads (ironic? money is money? who knows?). But if blog ads means that you give up a space on your site to advertise damn near anything, then I think I’ll keep paying the bills myself.