I went the old school method and we brainstormed some aspects of blogs on the whiteboard. Here’s a bit of what we came up with…some of them overlap, some may be central to blogging and other peripheral, but they give a sense of some of the rhetoric of blogs. Special thanks to James Goldberg, Jeff Swift, and Gideon Burton for their thoughts.

The rhetoric of blogs:

Collaboration and interaction — in most blog platforms, comments are the norm, and it takes effort to remove them. Collaboration–developing ideas through discourse and discussion–is facilitated by these comments. Blogs admit that any communication is speaking to an audience, and interaction with that audience is encouraged. Many of the best blogs are conversational.

Visual formatting and emphasis — the visual design, the form, is an intrinsic part of the message. We even like the academic blogs that we read to be visually appealing, to have pictures and headings, to engage with us on a formal level. (Note to self: this is something I need to work on. I have only one picture in this post and bolds and italics are only marginally cool/effective.)

Length — while not nearly as short as microblogging and facebook updates, most blogs are not a long form. Often the entire post will fit on one screen, or with just a small scroll. In blogs we’re given palatable pieces of thought.

Personal nature — while there’s many genres (journals, political, satirical, academic, etc.) blogs tend to be a rather personal form of writing. We want to see the man behind the curtain, and for him to talk directly to us. Further, what you say matters and accumulates over time, helping to define your individual identity.

Conflation of author and audience — No longer is the ability to publish held only by large corporations or those with financial backing. The roles of author and audience are conflated, and we slip between them constantly.

Hyperlinks and connections — like many other types of new media, blogs take advantage of the ability to link and make connections between things.

Unpolished/in process thought – blogs celebrate unpolished thought, which sometimes can be a bad thing. But this can also be the blog’s greatest strength: we don’t have to polish something to see how an audience reacts, we don’t have to set our ideas in stone to have them worth sharing, and we become more willing to adapt our position and engage in true discourse when we recognize that the form is not about creating a permanent manifesto. To use Gideon Burton’s term, versioning is not only accepted, but encouraged.

Public spheres — blogs are one form that allow us to become involved and make a contribution in the issues that matter to our communities. By having a public blog, you join the conversations going on that determine the rules of the world we live in.

Literacy — Like with all aspects of literacy, there should be both consumption and production. Because of their accessibility, it’s quite simple to become thoughtful consumers and producers of texts.

How I use blogs in the first year composition/writing classroom:

I post class blog assignments online; students write blog posts 1-3 times a week.

Blog posts allow students to find rhetorical examples, develop their writing with the help of their peers and an audience, publish their writing, and reflect on the writing process.

Students engage in dialogue through commenting on each other’s posts and responding to those comments.

Every semester some of the specifics of what I do with blogs in the classroom change, but overall I’ve received positive feedback and more positive feedback (it still seems that students got things out of it even if they weren’t thrilled). Further, I’ve seen my students’ writing improve by leaps and bounds.

Further reading– Check out my recent article in the Locutorium journal: Opinion Editorials, New Media, and Participation in Real Public Discourse.

Five dos and don’ts fresh from the classroom:

1. DO introduce your students to new technology in the classroom setting.

If you want to incorporate new media in the classroom, don’t just expect that all of your students will be able to set up the proper accounts, get on the class blog, figure out where the “new post” button is, etc. on their own.  Any classroom–even the college classroom–will have a wide variety of students, some who have had less experience with new media technologies.  Don’t let the digital divide put students behind from day one by being there when your students are learning new technologies.

Now that my students have posted their first blog post while in class, they’re no longer intimidated by the blog post that’s due for homework tomorrow.  They know the technology, and can now focus on their writing.

2. DON’T try to have all your students get new online accounts from the same IP address on the same day.

Two programs we use in my classroom are Blogger and Google Documents.  Both require a Google account.  About half my students had Google accounts already, and I falsely assumed that the rest of my students would be able to get Google accounts while we were working in the computer classroom. After all, it worked last semester.  The problem we ran into was that the computer lab uses one ip address, and with so many people trying to get a Google account from the same ip address, google marked the ip address as spam.  As a result, two of my students still don’t have google accounts, though hopefully by Wednesday that problem will be resolved.

Next time I’m emailing my students a week before classes start and asking them to get a Google account before the first day of class.

3. DO design the first day’s new media activity so that those who were quickly able to set up their accounts don’t get bored.

While it took some of my students 20 minutes to set up their accounts, some students were done in 2.  Luckily, the activity was for them to create a blog post and then post comments on other people’s posts.  Those that were able to set up their accounts quickly were able to read and comment on a larger number of posts, and didn’t have to sit there twiddling their thumbs.

4. DON’T plan too much for days that you’re introducing students to new technologies.

My goal for the computer classroom was to have my students 1. create their accounts; 2. post their first blog post, a one paragraph description of their writing process; 3. comment on other’s blog posts; and 4. turn in a Google Document describing their course goals.

I quickly realized that some of my students would not even get to the third task.  I decided not even to introduce the fourth task, because it required a separate technology and I wanted my students to spend enough time writing to produce quality blog posts and comments.  Google Docs will just have to wait.

5. DO interact with your students and their new media writing on a regular basis.

This is something I’m trying to be better at this semester.  You show value to new media writing by interacting with it, participating in it, not just by giving students a grade.  So while I won’t be able to comment on every single blog post my students write (each of my students writes 3 a week) I should comment at least as many times as I’m requiring my students to comment.  If I expect my students to have an online conversation then I should be there for it.  Yesterday, whenever students didn’t need my help, I tried to comment on their blogs.  In my 5 to 10 minutes of downtime, I was able to comment on at least 3 people’s posts, adding my own thoughts.

My goal is to be a mentor to my students, a teaching collaborator, and interacting with my students and their new media writing is key to acheiving that goal.

What other dos and don’ts have you picked up from using new media in your classroom?  I’d love to hear your insights and ideas.