Intro #2 So you think you can blog? Assumptions and Implications

I am the type of techno dunce that pushes all the buttons on the remote until something changes on my Star Trek Next Generation episode.

I have the remotes on my school labeled with arrows drawn by me in white-out showing which of the 27 buttons I need to worry about.

I can't change the ringer from off to on, on the phone and yesterday when I was trying to text msg my daughter Tess, I couldn't find the alphabet! Just call her growls my husband. I suck at texting on this new phone!!! I bemoaned to her.

Much later, I realized belatedly that yes, you actually do need to OPEN the phone to see the keyboard...oh my..

I can't change the clock on my Honda CRV when we foolishly revert to day-light wasting time and I don't ever wear a watch..

You get it.

So basically my approach to blogging is not unlike that of many of my students. Most at-risk kids in our world do not have computer skills and are afraid to look inadequate. So they "hate" computers. After raising two teenaged daughters, however, I have no qualms about appearing inadequate; i.e.: Mom are you really going out in THAT!!!

But first I had to get over my annoyance at the prevailing orthodoxy of blogs as necessary and imperative tools for education. I'm sorry Richardson, you began with this assumption and gave no evidence to convince me that there is pedagogical validity in this exercise. I have always thought of blogs as being the online Vanity Press and ascribed arrogance to its partakers who dare to assume the rest of the world need/wants to hear from you!

Also, I worry about the clutter, like so much junk floating in an unceasingly sullied space. Just because we can is not a reason. So many dead sites, discarded blogs, unanswered postings ancient queries; the old-school town dump that no one seems to bury.

But as my classmates examined applications in their posts and as I researched the many and varied examples of good blogs and the responses they generated, I began to see possibilities for
for my students, particularly in our photography class. Some blogs for example, are templated more for images, while others more for text. I can also see application for my pregnant and parenting teens program as many of these students are on campus maybe only once per week, while many miss whole semesters if they have given birth. This building of their friendships and immediate contact and support would help them stay connected and we could all share links to helpful and informative sites on parenting, health issues, legal issues, and the myriad of issues they struggle with. But can't Facebook do that?

But that's another topic.

Okay, so let me see.

I'll start with the simple, box step. But first let me clear some junk out of my space...

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