Category Archives: Blogging Skills

Think-Aloud Blogging – Preparing for Formal Writing

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This is an important topic for many ESL students seeking to develop their formal writing skills. One challenge is how to separate the informal and formal types of writing. Sometimes in blogging, the personal details get mixed in with the more formal writing. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a bit odd for readers who are seeking information about a subject, not the author’s own personal life details.

I think that it is important to develop our formal writing and document our thought-processes along the way. I call this Think-Aloud Blogging, and it is intended not as a piece of formal writing, but as a way to support and enhance the formal writing process.

 

Terry Anderson has written this blog post about issues surrounding student disclosure of private details on their blogs.

Oftentimes, students are confused between the requirements for writing formal academic settings, such as what is expected usually within a formal learning setting, and what is acceptable and expected as self-sponsored writing.

This post is intended to un-pack some common techniques professional academics use on blogs for presenting ideas.

Note to Audience: This technique of appending extra thoughts to the post is an example, of the use of blogging for monitoring and reflecting on self-performance – the capture of self-talk is neither personal, nor is it essentially academic ( I have never seen a writer’s second thoughts and revisions on an academic paper, anyway). So this is an example of the “think-aloud” activity that blogging is so uniquely effective for capturing.

Terry Anderson demonstrates that the tone, the voice, differs significantly in the formal presentation of ideas. In his blog post Rethinking Disclosure and Surveillance, for example, the presentation of ideas includes citations, references, and quotes from a number of sources. The presentation of data is sequential and organized. For example, he describes the behaviour of adolescents, and backs up his arguments with a list of data. Then he proceeds to strengthen his main argument by broadening the discussion to include adults as well.

A key element of academic argumentation is to take the perspective of the other, in this case, those who are critical of blogging:

“One is tempted to think that the only rational solution to social networking and blogging is not to do it” (Anderson, 2010, blog post).

The blog post uses a number of other connective techniques not typically associated with academic writing. The use of embedded links, for example, are often not seen in academic papers, and visible only in blog posts.

However, Terry models clear rules for effective use of links to support his arguments:

“In a 2008 paper on First Monday, Albrechtslund makes an argument for the positive benefits of ‘participatory surveillance’ .”

Note to self: I am intrigued to explore how frequently how other academic bloggers use citations and references in their blog posts, and whether they use a similar style or a different approach – something to look into at some point.

This embedded link has sufficient context to identify the journal, the year of publication, the URL, and the author, as well as enough details identifying the significance of the link and its relevance to the main idea of the post.

Terry then goes on to quote from sections of the article accessible in the open journal, IRRODL, the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. This is another characteristic of academic writing. It is not enough to just link away, it is crucial to select credible, high-quality academic sources that support one’s main ideas.

Note to Audience: This is the beginning of my interpretive piece, analyzing the sub-text of Terry’s post, based on my own recent readings. I am “reading into” what Terry has said, and am unsure if this what was intended, or implied.

He continued his post by engaging in what Marlene Atleo describes as a process called phenomenological orienteering (Atleo, 2001). The blogging activity enables academics to engage in storying, in examining others’ perspectives.

Thus, I would argue that the act of blogging affords writers a freedom to “…move across world-views, mapping oneself from one worldview onto another and onto yet another, and then back again” (Atleo, 2001).

Thus, Terry Anderson is engaging in professorial discourse, stating arguments in a formal, academic voice, a voice that students aim to emulate and develop themselves. He moves from a story about scientologists and their activities on UUNet, to describing the scenario of FaceBook, and moving on to the experience of users of ELGG in the learner community, Athabasca Landing.

Note to Audience: I have engaged in “professorial discourse analysis” providing a tentative “take” on what Terry was writing about, and opening myself up to conversation, so that my misconceptions, misunderstandings, are revealed and clear for interpretation and correction. This is an example of discourse that invites conversation, dialogue and feedback from the source blogger.

In this blog post, I have examined common techniques academics write formal prose on their blogs. Having unpacked the techniques that academics use in their blogging practice, I understand why students are commonly confused over the requirements for writing in formal academic settings, what is expected of them as bloggers within a formal learning setting, and what is acceptable and expected as self-sponsored, personal writing.

Note to audience: I deliberately used an oral rhetorical device by repeating a main point from the beginning of the post at mid-point, and adding extra details to it. Thus, the use of the blog affords us to use a process of writing in which we recycle and repeat main points, as is the case in the oral tradition.

Without a clear map, students confuse self-sponsored writing with academic blogging, and mix the prose, mix the voices, and experience undue frustration and ambivalence.

Students may respond to their frustration and ambivalence in two ways: they could either turn off their internal critic, and write personal content not typically found within a formal academic blogging context, mixing personal content with formal, academic prose, or turn on the internal critic full blast, so to speak, and become reluctant, exasperated and resisting, throttling their blogging efforts to a trickle.

One of the concerns I have about enabling student blogging is that sometimes academics (and students, I hasten to add) entering into blogging with students have not themselves clearly identified heuristics for handling self-sponsored writing – blogging by students that is reflective, emotional and highly personal, and often not directly connected with anything being taught in the course.

How should instructors (and other learners exposed to intensely personal content by other students, for that matter) engage these learners appropriately, using a variety of conversational types, such as strategic talk, or normative discussions, or even purposeful talk? I think this is a question worth further exploration.

The methods for using blogs, the tone, the voice, all differ, depending on the type of talk we are engaging in with our learners. Instructors (and learners) need to be explicit, identify the purpose for their talk, the tone and voice in use, and acknowledge as well that the other prose that extends and blurs the boundaries between academic and personal is valid, and legitimate, as well.

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Adding Texture to Academic Blog Posts

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  1. Using Footnotes to describe way-making , and add context
  2. Using Title HTML tags to define, and elaborate on concepts
  3. Signalling register and voice changes
  4. Signalling in-line edits with the combination of the strikethrough and italics keys
  5. Inserting revisions and updates with different font types

Note to audience/self: this addendum provides extra context for me, providing an anchor and history of the origins of the thought processes.

Key Concepts:

I am responding in part to rather long night of vivid lucid dreaming about the topic of defining the nature of academic blogging, brought on by a long stretch of active blogging the day and night before, and likely inspired as well by Walter Ong’s textbook, Orality and Literacy.

path-makingIn addition, I recently posted a photo of thousands of small fish in a holding pond, and it reminded me of the idea of piling 1

But unlike piling, the blogging activities that involve layering, or adding layers of revisions and updates in various ways, can enable students to track their progress at different levels that go into more depth.

From reading Walter Ong’s chapter on how writing creates consciousness, I recognized that how we are taught to write is constrained by what we write with, the very technologies themselves. And how we do write in such a new medium such as blogging is tempered by how we are used to writing, and by the conventions we are expected to follow.

Currently, blogs are not so widely accepted as the equivalent as academic writing. It is so new in the history of writing, that standards of formal academic writing are maintained by peer review boards to ensure quality of presentation, to set very clear expectations for writers and readers of journals. Writing an academic paper about blogging, in my limited experience, is a frustrating experience.

(Move your mouse over the link to view the text) It is like asking the cat to be a dog.

How can blogging be demonstrated under the constraints of the writing conventions of a formal journal, when the very journal prevents the use of the texturing blogging makes possible? (Move your mouse over the link ‘texturing’ to view the overlying text)

 

So much of what blogging offers enables can be best demonstrated through the blogging tool, not other tools. Editing changes, such as the strikethrough, combined with the italicized text, can be used, as in this case, to shift ideas in mid-sentence, offering valuable insights for the students as they draft and revise their work. 2

The introduction of blogging into instruction is quite disruptive, requiring a discussion about what constitutes writing, and what should be done to develop skills in connective writing online in its various forms.

To date, blogging is simple, amounting to some use of links, photos, and a couple comments. In this post, I am demonstrating a number of techniques that can added to academic blogging so that it separates blogging from other earlier formats, creating a new genre with its own set of rules and conventions.

By combining footnotes, comments, and title tags, in addition to a number of techniques to signal changes of register and voice,  to enhance student reflection on their own work over time, the original intent of these techniques are shifted from known standards of use, to a more fluid, flexible set of rules, where learners can be free to experiment and be creative.

The focus of blogging can be both the individual learner, to begin thinking beyond the two-dimensional writing space, and blog by being aware that one can add texture through layering and linking (third dimensional writing ) 3 as well as be aware that one can track and monitor and coordinate one’ own blogging efforts for emergent themes over time (fourth dimensional writing).

  1. I first came across this idea in Lilia Efimova’s blog, when she was referring to the classifying of posts using similar tags and adding posts to categories. ↩
  2. I have seen the use of the strikethrough repeatedly in other bloggers’ post, but have only used it myself for the first time in this post. ↩
  3. three-dimensional visualization of blogging activity and network-building has already begun, but is limited to date to the two-dimensional screen ↩
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Explorations in Academic Blogging: D’Arcy Norman

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Academic blogging is quickly emerging as a separate genre. In the first of my series of blog posts, I explored Dr. Terry Anderson’s academic blogging style, and analyzed his blog post on Rethinking Disclosure and Surveillance .

I then explored Dr. Tony Bates’ academic blogging style, and though there were several similarities, there were quite a few differences, as well.

In this third post, I analyze D’Arcy Norman’s less formal blogging style for clues on using the blog for idea-capture. Though his style differs in many respects from the other two, more formal, bloggers, the informal writing style  represents a recommended blogging method for working through ideas and engaging in meaning-making.

My purpose for careful analysis of the writing styles of Canadian academic bloggers is to make explicit some current blogging practices. By identifying exemplars with the Canadian academic blogging community, a clear set of blogging standards can be identified for use by student bloggers and their instructors within emergent practice networks hosted by formal institutions.

D’Arcy Norman created a post titled On note-taking while attending the CeLC2010 conference a few weeks back in Edmonton, Alberta.

D’Arcy uses a number of embedded links within sentences to refer to the CeLC 2010 conference and to the specific session he is commenting on.

D’Arcy uses italics to emphasize his main ideas that he wants to make sure sticks out from the rest of the text. The use of the italicized text is one significant departure from the formal style of Anderson and Bates.

Another writing technique he uses in his blogging that marks a departure from the formal style of blogging is that he uses the dash – to shift his voice from the formal to informal tone, and add more details about his thoughts to the audience.

The ideas are presented as a stream of consciousness, as an extension of what he is saying to himself. It demonstrates a more informal style that is capturing the moment, and he makes use of visuals such as photos. In the case of this blog post, he has scanned a copy of a page from his notebook he used to jot down ideas while attending the conference sessions.

D’Arcy Norman also made use of the brackets to elaborate in more details on things, and switched repeatedly between different voices, and between different audiences. He writes as much for himself, as for others, and slips back and forth between both the formal and informal styles.

In addition to the use of italics to emphasize a point, he uses the bold text for not to selectively identify a specific view he does not hold.  D’Arcy had also used the ALL CAPITALS to indicate a difference of degree, in this case, “MUCH higher quality”.

The sentences that D’Arcy uses are MUCH closer resembling the flow of speech. This kind of idea-capture process is a key component of academic blogging; however, it is not typically used for formal presentation to a audience. Instead, it is a personal “working-through” of one’s own thoughts and impressions, capturing the subjective learning into a written narrative, consisting of notes, experiences, conversations, and intuitions.

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Considering Student Disclosure and Transparency

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There is a real concern among educators about protecting students’ privacy as most of them may not realize how much information they are revealing about themselves.

Professor Terry Anderson, for example, in his blog post about ReThinking Disclosure and Surveillance on his Virtual Canuck blog, sums up his arguments by stating that the “potential harm masks an equally large potential for participation, connection and building of social capital.”

Young people need to have a discussion about the issue surrounding privacy and disclosure within their classes which reminds them of the risks associated with public blogging. My take on this is that students in elementary and secondary schools should be participating within a secure shared blogging space, or, that they use avatars. Yet this might not be enough, if students begin sharing their posts to a wider public on their own external blogs. The issue is contentious, but my view is that students need to be given warnings concerning revealing the following information in the public domain: (It is a given that these details will not be allowed within student blogs.)

This is a starting point for discussion:

  • posts that contain students’ descriptions of their own (or others’)  risky behaviors;
  • posts that contain disparaging, insulting and demeaning comments about others;
  • posts that refer to (or link to) violent, sexually explicit or mature content, such as blog posts, videos, pod-casts, photos, web sites, music, games, etc.
  • posts that describe sexual activity, alcohol use, cigarette use, or drug use;
  • posts that give out personally identifying information, such as an identifiable picture, first names or surnames, and even their own addresses or hometowns.

It is also understood that students’ blog posts to the class blog are moderated by their instructor prior to publishing, and embedded links within posts will be checked for content. Unsuitable content (or content containing inappropriate links) will be deleted/unpublished, and the instructor will follow up directly with the student about the inappropriate content, or links.

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Independent Bloggers’ Manifesto

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This is the 2014 update of an earlier version I posted, in which I outlined a student bloggers’ bill of rights and responsibilities. In this update, I create a student bloggers’ manifesto.

1. Independent Bloggers will outline their own individualized blogging mission statement, explaining to their intended audiences some of the key reasons why they blog.

2. Independent Bloggers recognize that they hold complete control and responsibility for modifying their own privacy options for disclosure of personal content within personal blogs and group blogs.

3. Independent Bloggers acknowledge and exercise their right to choose not to participate in dialogues or knowledge-sharing and can opt out of the blogging and are not bound by a routine of regular posts. In addition, they can also choose to not disclose personal experiences, and not to feel pressured to blog for any audience.

4. Independent Bloggers can choose to refuse to participate in activities in which they feel uncomfortable. They can also choose to adopt a pseudo, “blog self”, or alias, and write in another’s voice.

5. Independent Bloggers accept that what is discussed within a private learning space among other students is not intended to be shared outside that learning space, and that students need to respect others’ privacy.

5. Independent Bloggers can opt out of being assessed by instructors if the assessment is based solely on frequency of posts and comments, and instead bargain with their instructors for a more meaningful assessment process;

6. Independent Bloggers can request an external validator/mentor as a role model to act as a guest assessor. Though the instructor holds the final say over assessment, it is expected that both the student’s and the guest assessor’s feedback is considered;

7. Independent Bloggers determine the extent of self-disclosure, and to whom they will disclose, and for what purposes;

8. Independent Bloggers recognize that other student bloggers have no obligation to respond to their posts, and they in turn have no obligation to respond to others’ posts.

9. Independent Bloggers need to understand that one must strive to balance their motivations for blogging between both intrinsic and extrinsic sources. Not only do students recognize they need to blog for one’s own individual intrinsic reasons, but for also seeking feedback from others, for drafting ideas for assignments, and for meeting course requirements.

10. In cases when Independent Bloggers’ intentions are to blog exclusively to meet the course requirements or compete un-authentically to win a popularity contest, they need to declare these intentions, and should be allowed to opt out of participating in educational blogging entirely.

11. Independent Bloggers are expected to outline their own expectations for engagement with others’ ideas – for example, whether it involves one or more of the following activities: reading, commenting, lurking; linking.

12. Independent Bloggers expect to retain posting rights, including the rights to edit, delete, restrict or widen access to their contributions, as well as the right to copy these posts to other personal/public blogs.

13. Independent Bloggers understand they need to notify other students and peers that comments linked to posts created within a “walled” educational space will be made publicly available, enabling other students to edit or delete potentially sensitive content beforehand.

14. Independent Bloggers recognize that they are answerable for any content created, and recognize their ideas are available in perpetuity once released into the public domain.

15. a) Independent Bloggers accept that their posts using others’ ideas require attribution, either by citing the author and title of the blog, or by linking to the post, or creating a trackback (if this option is available).

b) Independent Bloggers’ posts allow others to redistribute the work for non-commercial purposes without modification. In cases where others seek permission to modify the student’s contribution, any derived work will share share-alike permissions.

16. Independent Bloggers have the right to respond to outsiders’ comments and include those comments and replies as part of their own edublog.

17. Independent Bloggers agree to entrust their ideas to be hosted by the educational institution for up to two years, after which, the institution will notify students that their content will no longer be hosted, allowing sufficient time for them to migrate their content;

18. Independent Bloggers recognize that the privilege of responding to others in a safe learning space is to be considered a sacred trust, and will never willfully engage in harmful actions, as determined through consensus by the student community through a discussion leading to a student bloggers code of conduct.

19. Independent Bloggers should be assured that their instructors have had experience maintaining their own blogs, and have a positive outlook toward the blogging experience.

20. Independent Bloggers should be assured that their instructors read and respond to their posts if this dialogue is requested. Independent Bloggers also have the option to opt out of group blogs, instead choosing to maintain a personal blog.

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