2#Blog assignment -23Feb10

23 Feb 2010

Blog #2

hampighead

Well Mr. update pighead can’t figure out how to post his second blog-Duhhhhhhhhhh! I suppose this is one of the many reasons I do not post onto blogs. 

I have enough problems keeping up with homework, reading and replying. With relatives and friends who have time on their hands to blog write me anyway they can, takes up time. This may sound selfish, but I have absolutely no time. I have a 94 year old mother whom I take care of from 5 PM until 8AM. By the time I feed her, talk to her, wash the dishes, most of the evening is shot. I then get up at 2 AM every morning, get up check my mother, help her with her duties, feed my dog, read a few min until 0430 when I talk to my fiancé in Vietnam. It is 7:30 PM in the evening there. We need to have some time together so there is usually a half hour there. So not it is 0500 AM my time. There is email traffic many important. I am also starting a non profit Corp for teaching children in remote villages in Vietnam, as well as keeping up with my Vietnamese partner in Saigon in the Travel business. We jointly have a US company called VIETNAM-USA TOUR LTD. which we are trying to launch. That takes time.

            Now homework? I have four full time reading and writing classes including this one. For four years I have been trying to take some creative writing classes and this the 5th year, I have finally lucked into two. One is with a world famous travel writer who is here for only this semester. He has graced me with the time to read what I write. That is an opportunity of a life time, and it also means I have to cram every available second on “FREE TIME” writing for his remarks. As anyone knows writing anything for publication takes a lot of time consuming rewrites.

            At the moment before I dive into the round of blogging, before answering the required 12 items to read for home work on blogging, the only good purpose for me in the world of blogging at the present is to keep a journal. I don’t know how this works, but I am interested in that. When I am in the field I take as many notes as possible and then when I hit the hotel, I spend a lot of time transcribing notes onto the laptop or a larger hand writing journal. Since I do not know that much about the blogging journal at the moment, I can’t remark on the pros or cons.

Pedagogue-TEACHER, SCHOOLMASTER;  especially   : a dull, formal, or pedantic teacher.

This term is used throughout the 12 teacher’s blogs. I didn’t look it up initially maybe I should have and the description might fit a number of them.

On the Subject of Blogs, by Laura C. Berry, in her first paragraph she uses the word ‘pedagogical’ when she mentions “for personal and pedagogical reasons.” Perhaps not the best word in turning me on to blogging “dull, formal?” But she turns out to be anything but. She snitches on the “English department knowing pretty much everything about everybody else, or believes they do.” She levels the playing field for privacy. Again she makes sense when she says that her “professional book (academic, scholarly), and the (theoretically) private conditions…must all come into my writing and teaching. No truer statement could be mouthed by an academic.

Most spout off their political views whether you want to hear them or not with out giving anyone else the privilege to counter their biased opinion which has no place in the classroom unless it is a political science class, yet they are very tight lipped about their home or private life.

She goes on to say “acknowledgments the necessary of intermingling of the two would change both how we write and how we teach writing and literature in significant ways.” I totally agree. She further points out that in bringing personal into the classroom she “is accountable for what I do.” Makes sense to me. She continues with, being real to my students is a way of cutting through their cynicism.”

This sounds good and I like her opinion, but I believe as some other teachers admit, they are not comfortable laying themselves on the line and having to defend themselves as well as home work assignments.  This blogging, telling, sharing may take a tough skin for some teacher. The students are required to do this regardless of whether they have thick skin or not, but in most cases the teacher is the only participant in their private opinions. One teacher says it allows the shy people who have a hard time speaking in class to be able to write their voice. This is fine as long as they are willing to share their voice with initially strangers.  

I have only recently been reminded again how hard it is for a writer to reveal some private actions, words, descriptions, personal beliefs and then be knocked silly by remarks on the work. This takes tough skin to make a come back. But again it all depends on how much of your guts you spill. Do you say too much, not enough, to crude, to self absorbing, etc?

Berry, mentions that blogs have a certain freedom in that there is room for graphics and photo’s, which could be mentally challenging for the viewer as well as the blogger. Another good point is that blogs, in form and in content, act out the vexed nature of subjectivity as poststructuralist readers, (I have to look up what a poststructuralist is?) A very good point is the difference from the “largely imagined world of people vs. our imagined selves.” She goes on to say “above all by making the very idea of a private self a publicly constructed, and playfully imagined, virtual object of desire.” I applaud her statements and agree wholeheartedly. But I think that she is of the rare breed when she can say, and I am sure her colleagues must have read this blog, “I often wonder why these English-professor types, who in most other settings would utterly reject the idea of a sacrosanct subjectivity, were describing the horror they would feel if anyone they knew gained access to their personal thoughts and feelings.” The very way she writes about her English Department and her colleagues indicates that she is certainly a strong opinionated teacher with a thick skin. Many as she points out don’t have that, and for that very reason, those teachers would have a problem with blogging in their classroom. She ends with she would rather revel in my incoherence and play with and as myself in the blogosphere.

For the first in the series it was a good opening for me. I agreed what she said, and it has opened my eyes somewhat.

I Don’t Really Want to Go into Personal Things in this Blog by Carlton Clark. He says that compostition teachers should be writers… But what kind of writing counts.” Good question?

The point of Blogging lab work is for my student is to write.” Exactly right!!

And he admits that the reason “I got into teaching because I loved learning.” Good reason.

Trying it on for Size by Nels P. Highberg

Two things: I recognize that I need to think about what I reveal and what I withhold…I teach them in class is what I do in real life.

The Bane of the Presidents Existence by Dennis G. Jerz

“recovering from what was very nearly a ‘spit-take’ ?? I have not idea what he means.

He notes a case of Bernice Blogs Her Hair – He mentions tht Bernice is the small Midwestern town of Eau Claire.

That was interesting, I don’t think I have seen Eau Claire and any writings, I lived on a farm a few miles from there in Wisconsin 6 months.

I blog Therefore I Am by Angelina Karpovich

She said that she enjoys the opportunities of having the journal as a creative space…In this environment, identity is not so much revealed as reconstructed. These are items I would certainly be interested in.

Aboard the Ideological Hot Air Balloon by Nicole Converse Livengood-

            Is this her real name? Livengood?

She spoke of yet another “latest techno-pedagogy bandwagon.” She was hesitant to try blogging in the classroom, “there was no way I was going to buy into the myth that bluffing encouraged students to write, broke down classroom barriers, an d enhanced critical-thinking and peer-group relationships. She goes on to say that she found it invaluable nonetheless. The recaps and previews helped me stay on track and develop lesson plans, but more important, recording my thoughts helped me to fine-tune my perspectives on teaching and pedagogy.” She goes on to say in defense of blogging “I find my student’s desire for “focus” especially intriguing.” She ends with the positive statement, “It is necessary that students make writing, and a writing space, their own.

Blogging from the Bottom: A Cautionary Tale by Eric Mason

As a blogger, you might also represent positions you otherwise avoid. By selectively creating links to other sites and into thier blogs, you become a gatekeeper and a gatherer of cultural capital (bloggers suffering simultaneously form the hunger for the new and the urge to gather cultural capital into their links section have become hunter-gatherers). Perhaps you will link to all the right people…

Having a BALL with Blog-Assisted Language Learning by Jason ward

This was particularly interesting to me because Jason is an overseas instructor. He says, Web logs provide a genuine audience, are authentically communicative, and offer uncharted creative potential…The Web log was the perfect antidote for my students’ apathy toward writing…he encouraged them to write about things they felt strongly about…Grammar and spelling mistakes were tolerated until the end of the semester when students printed out their final blog and the comments they had posted on other blogs to submit in a portfolio for assessment.”

I thought thoughts were well worth my observation. Since I have not blogged I really cannot comment of the worth. I will in the future log my experienced opinion when that time comes.