Week 6 Questions from Weekly Readings

Kajder 2004

"We’re only just getting started and are at a place where questions far outweigh answers. Emily’s list is long and reflective of our early stage: 'How often will my students blog? How am I going to assess my students’ blogs? What will the rubric look like?'"

How relevent are the above questions to teaching in terms of being new questions? For example, how many teachers say “ how often will my students pick up a pen and paper, or how often will my students type?

"How am I going to assess my students blogs?" Why is this different than pen and paper journaling, and couldn’t the rubric look the same as traditional forms of learning if you considered content over quantity?

Nardi 2004

"Why would so many people post their diaries—perhaps the most intimate form of personal musing—on the most public communication medium in human history, the Internet?"

Would more people use Blogs for knowledge or filters, if they were introduced as such in learning exercises – i.e. teachers are using them as diaries, therefore, they are seen as such.

Many people assume that technology is making the world a more impersonal place – given the above quote from Nardi (2004), how true is the statement, and can a case be made that technology (blogging) actually increases social interaction?

Opinion: Do bloggers who look to their postings for advice consider the advice from known bloggers or strangers to be more sound and credible?

"While bloggers do not always judge their audiences correctly, and may inadvertently write inappropriate or injurious posts, consciousness of audience is central to the blogging experience."

Toner (2004)

If teachers are using blogs as pseudo support groups and seeking advice from one another, is privacy an issue (administration liability, parent or student confidentiality, etc.) ?

Packer (2004)

"A curious thing about this rarefied world is that bloggers are almost unfailingly contemptuous toward everyone except one another. They are also nearly without exception men (this form of combat seems too naked for more than a very few women).”

Nardi mentions that bloggers are conscious of their audiences. Given the above statement by Packer (2004), is this contradictory, where is the distinction between readers and posters and “everyone else”? Or are readers who do not post, the “everyone else”?

Also, is it the instanteous nature of blogging that creates the appeal in political postings that Packer talks about, or is it the sniping comments that are often viewed as satire?