Dispatches from the If a Tree Falls Department



Via incorporated subversion

Just reread Steve Krause’s When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Emailing Lists, Discussion, and Interaction and two things sprung to mind.

Firstly this is absolutely critical reading for anyone considering blogging in teaching and learning, it’s a really good examination of blogs not working and that, in my book, is as valuable as 10 papers on why blogging is great. I’d put this on any reading list.

Secondly, Steven’s conclusion that essentially email listservs are a far more effective place for discussion is pretty accurate but what he doesn’t seem to go into is exactly why this is. I’d argue that this is basically down to the fact that email comes simply and ubiquitously to each person whereas the blogs in Steven’s case were very much places that people had to visit, multiple places at that which makes them even less conducive to discussion than typical discussion boards.

A snippet from Professor Krause' excellent piece:

A "non-dynamic" failure

I thought this blog assignment failed most interestingly in its inability to generate a dynamic discussion, particularly in comparison to an emailing list. This is the first class I have taught in a long time in which there was quite a bit of reading and there wasn't some sort of required discussion taking place on an electronic mailing list. In my other advanced writing classes, the mailing list is the place where students talk about the reading before the class, giving the group a starting point for discussion and giving me an idea about where students are "coming from" on the readings. But that wasn't the use of the mailing list for this seminar. In fact, before the events surrounding the Herring essay, there were fewer than two dozen messages sent to the list in three months worth of class.

Link