Today (Dec. 5, 2003) jill/txt posts about her planned talk at brown. She states, “blogging is not simply keeping an electronic journal, it’s distributed and collaborative; it’s learning to think and write with the network ["network literacy"].” Blogging is something we do separate (divided) from each other (distributive). We each post individually or as members of a group. And, blogging is also something we do together (combined) when we link to others’ sites and when we comment on others’ posts.

[Note to self: work on saying this better.]

Walker continues, “Bringing network literacy to the classroom means jolting students out of the conventional individualistic, closed writing of essays only ever seen by your professor.” She did this by requiring or encouraging:

* specific task completion

* blogging in class

* peer linking

* course blog linking

* www blog linking

* feedback

* editing

Then, “in future: teaming up with another group of students elsewhere, crosslinking?”

[Note: While my paternal grandmother was Norwegian, I am unable to read Norwegian and consequently couldn't read Walker's class blog to see how this jolting of students progressed.]

What are other ways to encourage network literacy?

Unpack: critical theory of blogging

*what makes for good blogging (reading, writing, linking, commenting)

*who the popular bloggers and some reasons why

*who the leaders are in the specific discipline

An instructor could explain these things; however, a critical understanding could further develop between and among students by requiring students to determine these things by searching the Web, conducting interviews, and small group work. The project could require them to distribute particular tasks, blog their findings, and engage in collaborative linking and commenting on the results. Further, class presentations could be done f2f or given sufficient time, via a tool such as webex.

Modeling

*Have students read blogs related to their interests and academic major

*Draw attention to matters of organization (dates, titles, categories, comments, permalinks, functional links)

*Have students write/model the organization they have observed in their readings.

Editing: (while drafting, prior to posting the more formal of the informal posts) encourage stylistic choices that make for good writing on the web, including:

*chunking

*use of subtitles for blog entries that run to multiple paragraphs

Moblogging

*Have students post via mobile device (phone, pda)

*Have students post via IM

*Have students post via email

*Discuss possible uses/benefits

Knowledge Communities

*What community life should be acknowledged or encouraged?

*Environmentally speaking, does blogging progress differently when we are alone than if we are in a computer room with lots of people?

*What kind of thought do we value? Who is doing it? How do we start and maintain a conversation with those folks?

*Specialists in the field could be invited to participate in the class blog.

Meditation

**Hmm. I’ve never done this in a college classroom — I don’t know how students would react. It could be far-fetched or uncomfortable for some and it would have to be secular in nature.** At a conference I attended on women in computing (WITI), one of the speakers (I’d link if I could remember her name) began her session with a meditation to relax and focus the attendees. This is a spin on networked, afterall, I believe WE are all connected by our thoughts, beliefs, and actions — if enough people on the planet/country/state/city/place/room believe it, then so it is (question? is this belief accepted by enough people to unpack it for class discussion?). If we were to engage in a moment of silence how would the resulting energy of the readings/writings/discussions (literacy) change?

I went back to Jill/txt to read more and followed one of the commentors, Alan, at blogshop. It has good information and explanations for bloggers wanting to get started.