Why not devise a lesson whereby students surf various blogs – maybe as a part of Blog Explosion to promote their own blogs – and construct a taxonomy of the blogosphere?

They could use a more simplistic hierarchy than the old Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus species. Individually, they could classify a sampling of a hundred or so blogs and then compare notes with others to see how much parallel categorization occured.

Deliverables could include a chart with screenshots of each blog (or representative blogs), the decision tree for producing the ‘species’, and stats on the ‘blogomass’ (biomass) for each species.

Enjoy!

Will, what we need is a new term. “Blogging” is taken, for better or worse. It *already* means a lot of things, from washingtonienne’s dishing to the ravings of DUers and Freepers to your own informed, thoughtful syntheses. Trying to claim “blogging” for one particular kind of activity is like Bayer trying to enforce the trademark on the word “aspirin.”

I do want to separate form from content. Xanga and Live Journal are blogs. Fine. They use the technology. People, not just kids, write in them, post pictures, create links, and there is much that is good about that process, usually.

But what I want carve out some space for is this new, heretofore non-existent genre of exposition that the blog form facilitates. It’s not just argument or personal narrative in the traditional sense. It’s extended essay, maybe that’s a better term for it, that has its root in reading, not personal experience. Certainly, we frame our interpretations of that reading with our own personal experience, but this genre focuses on the interpretation, not the experience. And it extends the interpretation into conversation, which pushes the thinking and the writing further. (For more on this see ““Brain of the Blogger”.)

Here is the key point: it is not a genre that I was exposed to in school because the technology was not available. Now that I’m coming up on my fourth anniversary as a blogger, I know that I wish it had been, and I want to in some way name that genre as separate from the others that we see out there. I kept a personal journal for many years and in reflection learned much about myself. This, however, is not that.

Back to the beginning…if the article had said “Students make their life an open journal” we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I know this is 90% me being stubborn and trying not to let what I’ve found to be a very new and educational genre of writing get diluted by what we could do all along. And I’m not going to be pulling my hair out over it. But I will keep pushing back and carving out that space for the simple reason that I think it’s important.

Have you ever read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics? Comics are a container independent of content (comics do not automatically equate to superheroes).

In the same way, personal journals and news and activism may be different genres, but they’re still presented within the same basic blog format. But they’re still blogs.

I don’t read Xanga, but I know of several LiveJournals that are used in the way I believe you consider “blogging.”
My own blog has vacillated between the personal, political and academic so often that I’m reluctant to assign it to any genre (it’s currently primarily leaning towards the personal side of the spectrum), which has shown me how fluid the boundaries are.

[For a longer elaboration on my description of blog as format, I wrote a Weblogs in a nutshell a few months ago for coworkers who were novices about blogging.]

I think blogging has a bad connotation in many circles. Bottomline: They’ll get over it. We’re still in the early adoption phase.

On another note: My county wants to provide 65,000 laptop computers to the students and teachers. Most of the teachers I have spoken with are against it.

I think those teachers should read “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. Actually, we should all read it.

Again, thanks for your blog.

However, I do think that each can be seen as a valuable learning experience. Doodling vs. writing…

..or journaling vs. “blogging”. Let me say it again, I think there is great value to student journaling as long as they’re not reckless about it. I’d encourage students to journal. I’m just pushing back against the idea that journaling and blogging are one in the same. They’re not. Both good, but in very, very different ways.

A bit of a rant from Will, but I don’t think it is unfounded. We can’t continue to hide from the fact that powerful new technologies exist, or from the fact that students use these tools in ways that could not have been imagined many years ago. Yes, there are students who use the tools inappropriately, but that already happens. Any student who writes obscenities on a desk is using a pencil in an inappropriate manner. Do we contemplate the removal of all pencils from classrooms as a result?

I have used MT and Thingamablog to help organize and analyze my thoughts for a couple of online courses that I have taken and it makes a world of difference. As you have stated, I can not only jot down my thought, but I can also annotate them, link to internal and external resources, and simply add much greater depth to my work than I could when I went to U back in the 80s. I find this analysis and revision process does go beyond simple journal-writing, though I believe that it can serve as an introduction to the tools.
Is there a difference? I believe there is, but then this is coming from someone who gets livid at signs that advertise “Live entertainment 2nite”. I get frustrated with people who use langauge incorrectly, but I know that language continues to evolve, as does people’s uses of it. Will these same writers eventually “get it”? Who’s to say? At the very least, it’s got us conversing about it. Maybe it really is blogging?
My one-year-old son is experimenting with drawing pictures on his Magnadoodle, and my four-year-old daughter uses it to practice writing words. Is one of them using the tool incorrectly? Yes, there is a different name, and a different process, involved in what each of them is doing. However, I do think that each can be seen as a valuable learning experience. Doodling vs. writing…

I agree that semantics are important, but I am not too concerned about rigorously defining them for myself–except to link away from the site. And I think most readers–even the ones that are not discerning–can tell the difference and apply the appropriate amount of attention.

You find what you like, what you enjoy, what you need you hit Furl, Blogline, or del.icio.us and come back later.

I suspect that in the aggresively Darwinian nature of the internet that these journals, comprising not much more than self-proclaimed rants, ravings, and ramblings, will find themselves quickly extinct.

On a similar thought–the one that got me to link over here from Bloglines in the first place–I find that educators take blogging a bit more serious than the rest of us and that’s kinda nice.

Douglas

my narciblog here: http://www.douglasblaine.com
and less so: http://www.coronerstories.com

Just a bit of push back, and believe me, I know I’m not in the mainstream view of all of this. Semantics is important here. There are millions of blogs, and millions of journals…they use the same technology, but I think they are vastly different genres of writing. It’s similar to the way we distinguish forms of exposition. We have the personal narrative, and then we have the argumentative essay. Certainly we wouldn’t call them both the same thing, would we?

Whoever is journalizing at Xanga is journalizing using a blog, not blogging, I think…

How about them split hairs? ;0)

I keep asking what do blogs allow me to do that normal pen and paper can’t because that to me defines what blogging, the verb, can be. I’ve always been able to journal, to pour my experiences, feelings, loves and hates and the like down on paper. Obviously, doing so in a Weblog changes the scope of the audience, and that’s significant. But I don’t think it necessarily changes the form in any meaningful way.

See this post:

But I’ve never in my life written the way I write in this Weblog. And frankly, I don’t know that I’ve learned as much from any other type of activity as I have from this type. And I learn when I’m doing just what I’m doing now (sweat on brow.) I’m not journaling. I’m not just linking. I’m attempting to synthesize a lot of disparate ideas from a varitey of sources into a few coherent sentences that I can publish for an audience and wait (hope?) for its response to push my thinking further. That’s the essence of blogging to me, and I can’t do it without a Weblog. That’s the distinction. That’s what tells me this is different. And that’s what makes me think so hard about the effects that blogging, not just using a blog, might have in a classroom.

And here is another.

Hope that clarifies it. Doesn’t mean I’m right, it’s just what I think. Feel free to disagree!

I think you’re getting tied up in semantics. Of course, Xanga is a blog site and whoever is “journalizing” at the site is blogging. With millions of blogs on the Net, most are not worth anyone’s time.

It’s tough to identify incredible blogs. Of course, that’s my niche http://www.IncredibleBlogs.com. And I do appreciate your blog because you have introduced many good blogs to me.

By the way, since the blogging is the ultimate communications tool, I think your e-mail address should be part of your site. It’s a blog thing.

Kindest regards,

Ken Leebow

I think you’re getting tied up in semantics. Of course, Xanga is a blog site and whoever is “journalizing” at the site is blogging. With millions of blog on the Net, most are not worth anyone’s time.

It tough to identify incredible blogs. Of course, that’s my niche http://www.IncredibleBlogs.com. And I do appreciate your blog because you have introduced many good blogs to me.

Kindest regards,

Ken Leebow