2002-07-17T01:05:00.000-07:00

Address of this document:
www.vate.blogspot.com
Time taken to publish it on the Internet:
Main text: three minutes
Supplementary links: quite a bit longer!

2002-07-17T01:04:00.001-07:00

On The Internet, Everyone Knows You’re a Blog

“The Web was designed to be a universal space of information, so when you make a bookmark or a hypertext link, you should be able to make that link to absolutely any piece of information that can be accessed using networks. The universality is essential to the Web: it looses (sic) its power if there are certain types of things to which you can’t link.
There are a lot of sides to that universality. You should be able to make links to a hastily jotted crazy idea and to link to a beautifully produced work of art. You should be able to link to a very personal page and to something available to the whole planet. “
- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
http://www.w3.org/1998/02/Potential.html

OK, correct me if I’m wrong: this being the Victorian Association of Teachers of English conference, I’m assuming you’re all English teachers, or at least people who care about the teaching of English?

You’ve heard that on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog? Well I’m here to tell you that on the Web, everybody knows that you’re a blog.

I’m going to start with the basics of blogs – what they are, how they work, what people do with them, why they’re so popular, that kind of thing, then I’ll talk a bit about where they’re placed as media and as a form of literature.

Yep, I said literature. I’d bet my copy of Postmodernism For Dummies that blogging will eventually – and probably quite soon - be recognised as a distinct literary form, and probably the first that’s evolved purely for the Web.

Then I’m going to throw around some of my amateur ideas on how blogs could be used to meet the goals of English teachers – that’s if your goals are to have students who enjoy writing, understand referencing and attribution and why they matter, who draw on a wide range of sources, have a strong sense of their own identity and voice and can read other people’s material critically and in a wider context.

I’ve put the text of this talk and all the relevant links up on a Web site, and there’s a hard-copy links list available afterwards so you don’t need to scribble anything down. I’ve left a few minutes at the end ~~because I ran out of material,~~ to allow for questions.

every good blog deserves faqs: some frequently asked questions

Frequently Asked Question #1: What’s a blog?

The only thing I can come up with that defines a blog absolutely is that it’s on the World Wide Web, and it’s a log – Web-Log equals “blog,” for short.

Some common, but not necessary, characteristics of blogs:

-A consistent Web address

-Regular new “posts” or entries, usually arranged chronologically, sometimes by topic. Most blogs have datestamps so you can tell exactly when something was posted.

-Links – both permanent and in posts, to supporting material and/or other blogs.

-A theme, however rough. A blog can be personal – just about the author – or it can stick to a topic, whether it’s a personal interest, like pop music, a project underway, or more objective, like a news blog that collects independent reports on, say, AIDS research from all over the world.

Blogs often also have “about” sections defining who writes them and why, images, a comments function for reader talkback, archives for past entries, and many are attached to a more permanent site – so an artist’s blog could have daily sketches entered, but the main site might list the artist’s fees and have a complete folio.

A lot have “hitmeters” that record how many visitors they get – this can range from one or two to tens of thousands every single day.

Frequently Asked Question # 2: What makes a blog different from a plain old Web site?

So the Web’s been around for ages – at least eleven years. Why have blogs taken until now to become the meme of the minute? Technically, having a frequently updated diary-style site has been possible since the Web was first started.

The most obvious answer is that it’s suddenly got much, much easier to make and publish a good-looking Web site.

In around 1999 and 2000, a rash of “blogging” services appeared on the Web.

Blogger, Pitas.com, Diaryland and MovableType are all free blogging services that allow users to set up a perfectly working, well-designed site in about five minutes. Things can get complicated after that, but there’s no reason they have to.

But the cool technology alone isn’t enough to explain the hundreds of thousands of blogs that have appeared in the past two or three years. After all, there are lots of new Web technologies that go nowhere.

Blogging, though, is becoming almost compulsory for any frequent Web user.

So, Frequently Asked Question #3: why do people blog?

Some bloggers put a huge amount of work into the design and appearance of their blogs; others have multiple blogs for different purposes - work blogs, study blogs, family blogs, writing blogs.

Comments areas become de facto discussion boards and virtual communities of bloggers form between people with like interests. Mutual admiration societies have sprung up in a world where the ultimate compliment is to put another person’s blog on your list of permanent links.

And it’s this personal aspect that, I believe, has driven the popularity of blogs and is the key to using them productively.

Unlike, say, the New York Times’ Web site, a blog’s editorial board can be one teenager in their bedroom at 3am.

It doesn’t guarantee you quality, and certainly not objectivity – but it does give a certain deep authenticity that most sites don’t have. (There have already been “hoax” blogs, but more on that later.)

In the same way as you get to know people, you get to know bloggers – what their interests are, how they like to talk, whether you like their outlook on life and the way they put it across.

Frequent asked Question #4: what makes blogs different from paper journals?

You’ve got linkage: The medium is the message.

It’s an old chestnut from last century, but Marshall McLuhan was right; the way you say something affects what you say.

It’s not unique to blogs to have links to other sites, but it is their defining characteristic. There are blogs without links, but to me, they may as well be written diaries transcribed, or an online episode of Big Brother. They lack connectedness to the virtual world, which is increasingly becoming a mirror of the real world.

Leaving those aside, most bloggers link and link actively. They find things that interest them and point them out, or they use their blog to leave themselves pointers to information that they’ll need in the future – a bit like a list of favourites, but with a lot more depth.

Any time you’re reading a blog, you are offered numerous chances to jump off the page onto another one. No self-respecting blogger would talk about something without providing a link to what they mean – so when I write in my blog “I’m going to talk at the VATE conference tomorrow,” the words “VATE conference” would be written as a hypertext link, just in case a reader wants to find out more about the conference by going to the official site.

If I was writing about Daniel Dennett’s theory of consciousness in a study blog, I’d link to a university site explaining it in more depth, and probably to several others providing counter-arguments.

If your students were blogging about Britney Spears’ new album, they might link to the official Britney site – a link is a link is a link.

Hypertext theorists love this stuff; they see Web links as the embodiment of the connectedness between pieces of information that began as mere clumsy footnotes in traditional academic writing.

But blogs aren’t defined by the links alone – the kind of links they use explain a lot of their popularity.

Computerised hypertext writing programs have allowed links to be embedded in writing for fifteen years. Since Michael Joyce’s Afternoon made nonlinear narrative real, stories and non-fiction that rely on the reader making choices have become more common. Computer games are arguably the state of the art when it comes to texts that respond to the “reader” - but these all tend to be closed systems, with the choices limited to what the authors put in, plus perhaps the actions of other players in the case of online games.

Blogs, by contrast, get a lot of their energy from outside sources, by linking to news reports, sites that prove a writers’ point and to like-minded people. Their commentary isn’t perfect – no one expects it to be – but it is incredibly timely and immediate.

The blogging culture, not incidentally, condemns stealing other people’s links without attribution, or using their images and designs without permission; you’re allowed to borrow, but you’re supposed to do it nicely, and give “respec’”, as Ali G calls it.

Since the Web was created, a written piece that links directly to its sources has always been possible – but to do it, you needed to be able to write HTML, to FTP and sometime even to ASP (have I lost you yet?).

What blogs do is to make that linking process a simple cut-and-paste exercise. And the culture that’s developing around them defines linking as its main currency – links can be praise or criticism, but they certainly mean you’re getting attention.

which brings me to the readers:

Frequently Asked Question # 5 Who reads blogs and why?

Blogs can do several things for readers:

· they can provide a sense of community – the classic case is when teenagers read each other’s blogs to find out what they’re thinking, and to help them realise that they’re not alone in their teenage angst. I’m not just talking about “real life” friends, but young people with a shared interest in, say, manga or surfing or stamp collecting from anywhere around the world.

· blogs can provide an expert guide and perspective to a topic. If I want to know what’s going on over at the powerful Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, I might look at their Web site – or I might go to ICANN Blog, a news digest and commentary site that definitely doesn’t follow the official ICANN line.

· They can provide firsthand information; the blogs of New Yorkers gave me a much more “on the ground” feel for the events of September 11 than the TV reports with their big-picture footage of crashing planes and George W. Bush’s speeches. New Yorkers uploaded photographs and wrote of their experiences before sunset that day- some images and words came from people who actually escaped the buildings.
· Along the same lines, blogs can provide insight; never before have so many people gushed out their feelings on so many personal topics so personally.

Frequently Asked Question # 6: Who blogs about what?

This is an easy one. Anyone can blog about anything, for any reason; think of it being as a slightly more sophisticated way to bang on about yourself and your pet topic, with a potential audience of millions and you’ll know why so many people do it.

Blogs can be used practically, as a study tool or journal, keeping a record of a project underway, or as a forum for users to have conversations (especially in “shared” or multi-user blogs).

More and more blogs are being written by professional journalists and writers, who use them as a cross between a soapbox and a filing system.

I like this quote, from science fiction writer, media commentator and blogger from way back, Cory Doctorow:

“I consume, digest, and excrete information for a living … As a committed infovore, I need to eat roughly six times my weight in information every day or my brain starts to starve and atrophy.”

Doctorow says that blogging is a way for him to make quick and dirty sense of the information he comes across, to put it in context and make it available for future reference.

Artists like Melbourne’s Looby Lu (aka Claire Robertson, an actual “award winning” blogger – there are already blogging Oscars, believe it or not), use their sites as visual diaries, regular diaries and as a promotion for their work. (Her visual diary takes after a guy in New York called Jorge Colombo who posts one drawing a day of the people he sees on the streets there.)

But there’s something more to it than the practical. I think that a large part of the appeal of the blog goes to the topic of this session: What about me?

Blogs do what personal home pages were supposed to do, but didn’t; they give their owners a place on the Web that’s uniquely theirs. Personal home pages tried to do this with a few photos of the person’s dog, kids or car, a few lines about their hometown and a hopelessly outdated resume. The Web is littered with abandoned “home pages” that were set up and never touched again.

A blog, on the other hand, is easy to make (have I mentioned that?), and by its very nature demands regular updates. There’s no need to write lame “about me” sections; a blog can work perfectly well without you ever knowing whether the author is male, female, American, African, 17 or 74. What you respond to is the voice and the topic.

Because blogs can be about a topic instead of just about the person, but at the same time don’t demand expert knowledge, and because of the time-based, journal element, they tend to have a certain momentum of their own.

The way I’ve seen blogs used most often (partly because these are the kinds of blogs I like most) are as traditional diaries with a performative twist. Their authors know that other people, perhaps friends, perhaps complete strangers, will be reading the blog.

At the same time, the blogging culture as it’s developed so far doesn’t necessarily demand good grammar, perfect spelling or even having something particularly interesting to say. (This might not satisfy your immediate goals as teachers, but it does mean that students can blog without feeling the pressures they might feel writing an assessable book report or essay.)

Frequently Asked Question # 7: Aren’t blogs just another Web fad?

Yes.

When a new Web toy or tool comes along, or when people first start using it, you almost always get a period of infatuation, followed by burnout, followed by a more measured pattern of use.

So many people have told me how when they first got on the Internet, they were using it night and day, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff that was there.

The attraction might have been chat rooms, online games, a community of like-minded rose gardeners, the ability to follow a hundred links to a hundred sites about their pet topic – but almost always, it eventually wears off and they get back to their normal lives. Someone told me: “You can’t follow every rabbit down every hole,” and once you realise that, it’s easier to pick and choose.

Blogging is another “killer app” – a technology application so attractive that it can get people who hadn’t seen a reason to be on the Web before to log on. (Think grandparents getting email when their grandchildren do.)

So it’s a fad; but it’s a good one.

Not so frequently asked question # 1

How can blogs help English teachers?

There’s a phrase you come across on the Internet, usually in discussion lists where people are hotly debating a contentious point. It goes: “IANAL, but…”

That stands for “I am not a lawyer, but I’ll tell you what I think anyway.”

so: “IANATE, (I Am Not A Teacher of English), but...”

But: I think blogs could be a tool to get students writing, and to help them order their thoughts. I think blogging can teach them that it matters to say “via Joe Bloggs” when they use something they found on Joe Bloggs’ site.

It’s worth saying this again: blogs are not technology, any more than an essay with footnotes is technology, or a diary is technology. You need to use a keyboard to write one, and often to make links to other things on the Web, but that’s a basic literacy in 2002, and the free publishing services make it as simple as possible.

A literature teacher once advised me to read with a pen in my hand; to take notes as soon as a thought occurred, and to make sure I read them back later.

This is potential blog teaching function number one: as a topic-specific study journal, and I can’t recommend project-based blogs highly enough.

I’ve used a blog this way, for a Melbourne University writing and criticism subject. Apart from making it easier to find my links to useful stuff, a la Cory Doctorow’s quick and dirty notes, it had the advantage of being accessible from anywhere; I could put down thoughts or look them up from home, from the library or at work.

I also found that from time to time, other people would come to my blog looking for information and ideas.

Possible use #2: Blogs as a topic of study: it’s already being done at the University of Berkeley in California. You could look at different writing styles, links as attribution, questions of online identity and authority.

Use #3: Blogs as news sources: news blogs are a special category, often written by experts; if your students are interested in a particular topic, or want to critique the mass-media view on something like Palestine v. Israel, going to relevant blogs might be useful.

Use #4: Blogs as a personal writing space: many bloggers treat their sites as a place to have a muse at the end of each day. Some of the best writing comes from these; I think there’s something about the feeling of being in one’s own space, but still having an interested audience, that seems to get people really striving for the right way to describe a moment in their lives, a feeling or an encounter, which is the seed of writing well.

I don’t know how being assessed on quality would affect this; maybe there’s a case for just asking them to keep a blog and submitting only selected pieces for assessment.

I’m sure that many of the people whose blogs I read would not be the types to keep paper-based journals. I do know that for dedicated bloggers, their site is where they define a lot of their online identity.

There was one blog, by a girl called Kaycee Nicole, which recorded her sad decline and death; the trouble was she didn’t exist. She was a fiction created by an American woman, based on images of a cheerleader the woman had known previously. She fooled me for a week or two just before she died; she fooled some people for a long time before that, and actually caused them quite a lot of pain. I don’t know how much I can address that now, but there have to be some lessons and questions in that kind of case about truth vs fiction, what the difference is and why it matters.

What not to do if you decide to get your students to blog:

I’ve come across a few blogs that read a bit like this:

“This is my first post. I have to make a blog for my ninth grade project, and this is it.”

That’s it. That’s the whole blog, from beginning to end. These students may just not enjoy talking about themselves – but more likely they are being asked to make a blog without knowing what it is, having something to blog about or they are shy; they think a blog is a kind of diary that their teachers will read to get at their secrets, and naturally they refuse to open up.

At the risk of sounding like I’m selling something, if you really want to understand blogs, here’s your homework; go to the Blogger site, spend ten minutes making a blog and then, over the next week or two, prepare one set of lessons there. Take rough notes online, search the Web and link to the useful resources you find, with notes about why they’re useful. Look for other blogs on the topic. And every time you log onto Blogger, click over to one or two of the “blogs of note” or just the random “recently posted blogs”.

Whether what you come across is a “hastily jotted crazy idea” or a “beautifully produced work of art,” a “very personal page” or something intended for “the whole planet,” I can guarantee it will intrigue you.

VATE Conference 20/7/2002: What about Me?