On Academic Blogging

Here's an interesting article from Inside Higher Ed that explains why one blogger thinks many academic group blogs fail, that is, why what he calls "quasi-institutionalized" blogging tends to silence discussion. The insights might be useful as we seek to better understand our students' blogging practices. Read the article:

A Skeptic's Take on Academic Blogs

Good news!

In my classes this week, we started talking about analyzing pieces of contemporary culture in terms of American social norms that we've been discussing this semester. So, I encouraged the blogging groups to link out to an ad or website and do some brief analysis of whatever they link to for their post. Three out of the four groups linked out successfully, and two groups actually managed to imbed images into their posts. I'm going to jump on the opportunity in class tomorrow to encourage such blogging behavior, and give them some more ideas for places to link to in their posts. I'm quite proud of them all. Check out the posts if you get a chance.