I find that I am increasingly relying on the blog as an aid while preparing lectures. I try to avoid using it as a way to present quotes and things I use directly, but I like it as a way to store links, comments and suggestions, both for my own background material and for the students who would like to have access to some of the resources I use to prepare.
I did the same thing for Blogtalk 2.0. It was received ambivalently. I had not foreseen that the net would be overloaded by the general use of so many laptops in one room, so I had to ask people to please log off. That request was received fairly gracefully, but ewwwww - felt bad. Some people were annoyed with seeing the links on the blog, some were happy. But when I had to ask people to turn off the computers, it lost a lot of the main reason for displaying the links like that. I originally wanted people to be able to call up all those links and play around with them while I was talking.
But teaching my regular students, I use the lecture blog mainly as a future reference for them and a tool of preparation for me. This lets them go back in my archives and reconstruct some of the background for my lectures, if they so wish. I also find that while the students don't react to this at first, as they become familiarised with it they use the lecture blog not only as a way to go back and check, but also as a way to see what I have in store for them in an upcoming lecture.
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3 comments:
For the past couple of years I have used blogging as a regular feaature/tool in my new media classes at JMK [www.jmk.su.se] in Stockholm. I have on blog which I use as a notebook, keeping a record of sites and links as I go. I find this a a much better way to save info than bookmarks - they lack context and temporality.This is a private blog.
I then have one for net-research tips, which the students can refere back to, and one for more "reasoning" work (dont love the term "theoretical" *s*. I also encourage my classes to start group blogs as a communication platform (along side the other tools of course).
I have found that the students "get it" pertty quickly, but that the staff are much more difficult to win over. Which is a pity, as blogging could be a great way for researchers to float ideas to a larger audience. And as Dan Gilmore points out - your audience knows collectivly more than you ever will.
I have looked for your rss-feed but cant find it. Do you have one?
All the best at the Trondheim conf, looking forward to seeing the results blogged :-)
/Mark
There is an RSS feed if you look down the list, just above "people online".
I think I'll post a list of my conferences this autumn, I am getting them confused, no wonder others do... But thank you for the well wishing, I'll blog as much as I can get around to, and what I don't blog I suspect there will be others to cover!
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