Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Another conversation...
I've been trying to keep up with the weekly posts, and it seems to me, between the different readings, and the various opinions/interpretations of the readings, our blog goes off in many different directions at once. Being new to blogs--this probably sounds simple to you wiser bloggers--but it seems much like the different conversations going on at a party, as (I think) Elizabeth mentioned sometime earlier this semester. So is it okay to only join in with the one or two that catch our attention that particular week? That's all we can really do, right? In watching (just the beginning) of that blogumentary, I was struck by the man who said he blogged because A) he has something relevant to say about "socio-economic" issues and B) "the world needs more conversations." How many conversations do we need? Or rather, how many can be attended to by more than a handful people at once, and how many will continue into any social relevance? {;#[
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2 comments:
I'm also finding the separate posts that that may (or may not) respond to each other, to what's been said in class, or to the readings to be a bewildering read when I come to check our blog. It may be a result of our trained study habits-- are we posting a weekly response to [fill in the blank] or are we blogging? Yes, this is a blog, but it is also part of our classroom and as such, I'm sure that all of us, as students, have the urge to post as entries something that would also count as a weekly reading response paper (to which I'm certain we have all been subjected to at one time or another). These kinds of pieces of writing are done independently and rarely take into account the writings of others. Is it possible to create a cohesive text with so many writers (most of whom are barely acquainted with one another)?
Conflicting with this urge to write independently is the latent knowledge (or possibly recently acquired)-- that those kinds of entries seem un-bloggy. Blogs seem to be most often the work of one entity, but when they are the work of a group, it is a very cohesive group that works together to explore their subject matter. We seem to be a bit lacking in the coherence department.
I don't mean to criticize anyone of us (especially not our fearless leader); I know I’ve contributed to the confusion. I just think that as a class we each may have a different idea of the purpose of this blog and have different goals for writing in it. It's something to think about.
I also think it's difficult to respond to people who I know that I know, but are using pseudonyms so that I won't know who I'm talking to. It just makes random posts seem that much more random, taking away from what little context they may have in my mind. I concede that you may not want the rest of the world to be able to attribute what you write here to you, but hiding your identity from the rest of the class seems petty. (I chose to post this anonymously to illustrate just how irritating this point is, not because I fear retribution. Isn’t that irritating?)
Well Tira, you are right. It is a bit confusing here in the “Blog”. (Yes the quotes are intentional) What you fine students are doing here is a fairly interesting open “Forum”. It would all be a lot less confusing if you were to have these little rhetorical gems of personal thought in an actual Forum Board setting instead of incoherently forcing it all into a linear Blog format. (It is a bit like taking all the books off of your shelves, tearing out the pages, and stacking them all sequentially by page number, if I say so myself) Navigation through your topics and comments would become a smoother, logical, and overall comprehensible experience if your discussions on Electronic Media were conducted via the correct media. Continuing in this vein will only make understanding your fellow students difficult to the point of futility. End the oppression of your thoughts! Make this incoherent babble into a Forum Board for the love of Jebus!
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