All entries for Tuesday 26 April 2011

Blogging for academic and personal development, a short video

I've just recorded a short talk about blogging for the History Subject Centre. In it I talk about how blogging as a form of writing (not a genre) pushes the blogger to behave in a specific kind of authorly manner. The blog presents affordances, constraints and enabling constraints, and when used in a certain way, can be an effective means for reflexively developing personal discoursive skills - an individual's 'voice' and (academic) 'technique' (I'm currently reading Writing: Self and Reflexivity by Celia Hunt and Fiona Sampson, which deals well with these ideas).

Transcript:

The term 'blog' is a shortened form of the phrase 'web log' - indicating that it is a log or diary of events that is written on the web. It's as simple as that. That doesn't imply anything about it's content or purpose. We shouldn't assume that all blogs are written for the purpose of self-publicity, or that all blogs are about trivial events in the life of the blogger. Indeed, not all web logs will have an audience, a single author or a common theme. Often when encouraging students to take on a blog, the first obstacle is to get them to understand that blogging is a form and not a genre of writing.

That does not however mean that the blog isn't a powerful and productive form. It is. It's essential structure encourages the blogger to think, read and write in a particularly interesting way. Consider the basic pattern: the blog contains a series of date-stamped texts, each of which is oriented towards some external thing or event that has occurred on or near to that date. Even if the entry were about an event in distant history, the time-boundedness of its publication in the blog ties it to a reflection of that distant event by the author at the time of publication. The empty form of the 'new entry' interface asks for a title, nominating some purpose for the writing. Typically the title must conform to a tightly constrained length, forcing the author to think about the essence of the entry. The body of the entry provides greater scope for expression, digression and consequently blogger's-block. The ability to add images, formatting, hyperlinks and multimedia offers routes by which the challenge of the blank entry may be overcome. But most importantly, the blank entry form demands some thing more of the blogger. They need a discipline of some sorts with which to fill it. It may be enough to attend to an interesting and significant event or object. But more usually, for successful blogging, the blogger needs to deploy some means for interogating the object or event with a writing strategy - for example, a set of questions.

So, a blog demands to be much more. It is a space that the author must fill through a mediated representation of an interesting object or event. The author is out-there, on the look-out for material. Upon finding material, they interrogate, expand it, filter un-necessary detail, get the right angle on it, and use their powers of expression to convey that story.

And yet there's even more to it. The entry need not necessarily lay dormant. The datedness of the entry may always pose the question: that was then but what of now? How might the event, the object, the author and the reader have changed over time? Most blog systems offer means for searching or browsing back in time. The blog is more than just a place to write an entry, it is a time machine. And there lies the real power of blogging: reflexivity. We can use a blog to review our past selves. To think about change, agency (or lack of), and to think about what might be possible in the future. For example, on a simple level, a student can refine the questions that they ask when investigating an event. They might over time find themselves more able to hear and amplify their own personal voice in theie writing. They might work with a tutor or their peers to refine the direction of their development. A blog may then be a medium in which we mediate between the world of events and objects, the individual, and academia.

So, to conclude, some recommendations on blogging for academic and personal development:

1. As with almost anything that is worthwhile, you need to acquire and apply an apporopriate discipline to your blogging. To become a good blogger, and hence to benefit from its potential for developing you and your writing, be an active and regular blogger, seeking out material and working it into entries.

2. Who are you writing for? Define your audience, large or small. It might even be an audience of one - you yourself (or your many future selves). Perhaps think of your blog as having distinct zones, ranging from a personal zone, through small group zones, to an entirely public zone. Perhaps you should first publish to the personal zone, and progressively widen-out your audience.

3. Actively seek out experiences to fuel your writing. Learn or invent tactics for finding good subject matter, or for making things happen.

4. Invent and refine systems for interrogating your subject matter - for example, a series of questions that you always start by asking.

5. Don't be overwhelmed by your audience or your subject matter. Retain the right to your own perspective. Make sure there's always something of yourself in there.

6. Quality does matter, even if you are only writing for yourself. But don't let it stifle your creativity and spontaneity. Write some content that is clearly identified as fast and immediate. Wrap it in text that is more considered and formal. Or use photos, audio and video to capture the moment. Then describe the moment with more well-developed, edited text.

7. Revisit your entries after some time. It's easier to be objective about your past self than it is about your present self. Set yourself objectives for quality and content.

Robert O'Toole : 26 Apr 2011 15:40 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem