In-class work Tuesday January 27

 

  1. Go to the class blog 320community.blogspot.com and identify your group-mates’ postings.  Read each group member’s TWO comments on the first week’s assignment. You’ll be getting to know each other as people AND as readers. So look closely both at what each person has said about her/himself and at each person’s insights on blog reading. Pull up one of the blogs you looked at in order to briefly show a feature of interest.

 

    1. What kind of “eyes” or “lenses” do your group-mates have that you did not use in your own reading? What did they see that you did not see? Make a note of it; this stretches your reading protocols—expands your ability to “see” the interface.
    2. Share your lists of technological goals and desires. Make a master list for the instructor.
    3. Go to each other’s practice blogs and discuss briefly what kinds of tinkering you’ve done.

 

(about 20 minutes)

 

  1. CREATING COMMUNITY MECHANICALLY. You’re all going to position yourselves as writers and readers (that is, as post authors/writers and commenters/followers):
    1. COMMENTS

                                                               i.      Go to Settings > Comments. There are 12 decisions to make with regard to commenting. Read through the options, discussing what each may mean in terms of forming community and noting any questions. Now begin testing out each option to see how it works. You may wish to work in pairs or threes—but do share insights with larger group. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to create a new posting so that your group-mates can test your decisions by commenting. GOAL

GOALS:

--EACH BLOGGER GETS COMMENTS FROM ALL GROUP MEMBERS

--EACH GROUP MEMBER UNDERSTANDS THOROGHLY THE COMMENT OPTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING.

 

    1. FOLLOWERS

                                                               i.      Place the Followers gadget on your practice blog. Have group mates sign up as followers.

 

    1. BLOGROLL

                                                               i.      Place the blogroll gadget on your practice blog. This week you’ll practice adding a couple of blogs to the roll.  (Remember this is practice still—you can and should be picky about what goes on the roll when you go live.)

                                                             ii.      Make notes for your own benefit.

 

(about 40 minutes)

 

  1. All of you have ideas for your public or “real” blog—but the majority needs to work on sharpening focus. As with academic writing, focus makes for more interesting writing and more compelling and ingenious research. It sometimes helps to imagine what kinds of research you’re going to have to do to feed your blog. So. . .  make a group list of what might count as “research” for each particular topic. Examples:  interviewing, taking pictures, searching for or creating images or film-clips, reading academic articles, reading in the blogosphere, blogs on similar issues, categorizing and defining (e.g., beer-making processes, locations of homeless shelters, recent or historical films made into books, kinds of tagging, names services agencies, specific technological arts. In short, where are the hunting grounds where you’ll find food for your blog?  

GOAL: A group-created list of what counts as “research.” (I’ll compile and distribute so that you can test out applicability to your project.)  

 

(about 15 minutes)

 

Hand in lists at the end of the period: technology lists; research lists.