In preparation for today's class, we looked at several blogs that discussed rhetoric, networks, and the pedagogical role of blogs and webpages. Collin Brooke's Weblogs as Deictic Systems was a compolation of related essays. The first blog post was about Diexis, the use of words and phrases that are purely contextual. The author then continues his thoughts by writing about how software is becoming more and more social, how this social networking is either inwardly-focused (centripetal) or outwardly-focused (centrifugal), or both. He then addresses how networks of people and ideas can quickly include a large number of people though a small number of connections and how blogs can help create these connections. Blogs are a tool for both centripetal and centrifugal networking.
In sharp contrast to Weblogs as Deictic Systems, The Blogora allows for a dialouge on many different topics and is constantly updated by many different contributors rather than only including one person's viewpoint. Although it is harder to read as a stand-alone source of information, it seems to allow a rich mix of opinions on everything rhetorical. A particularly interesting recent post I saw was about a Apple application that disables a users internet for 8 hours at a time so that they can't get distracted online. It posed the question of whether it was positive or negative liberty and was meant to start a discussion on the topic open for others to contribute.
I think that blogs can play a very important role in the classroom, but feel that they need to act as a discussion and not only as a stand-alone statement by the author. There is obvious value in having a student write and post their own materials, but by opening up their materials for others to comment on (and contribute to) it creates a small discourse community and involves a larger number of students in a more substatial way.
No comments:
Post a Comment