One of the most recent articles online about educators using blogs starts with "Blogs help educators share ideas, air frustrations" by Mark Toner.
The Importance of Paying Attention
Cynthia Selfe herself was not the first but has been the most persistent in proclaiming we educators pay attention to how we use technology in our classrooms and the assumptions we make. For example, what assumptions do we make about access to computers in our assignments and teacher narratives? Do we assume students and schools have access to computers? As far as gender, blogs have been more of a male pasttime than a female one. How does this fact effect blogging and issues discussed in blogs? So are blogs considered more male than female? And is the rhetoric more male-oriented than female? Issues of race and class are also important on Selfe's view. Are blogs used mainly by people of ample socioeconomic status? And so are those who cannot afford the Internet at home therefore disempowered because they have no easy access?
So one of my preoccupations will be rather teacher blogs demonstrate an awareness of these issues such as class, race, access, and gender.
This is the beginning of my teacher blog, a sort of meta-blog, a blog about teacher blogs. But it is also my blog, a personal space that blogs allow and even encourage. They are of course also public spaces.
Recently, Middle Eastern blogs have brought attention to this new medium of web logs in that they have given a political voice to people who have been denied any such voice. I mean specifically the Bagdad Blogger. But I also mean blogs that surfaced after the earthquakes in Iran. These blogs criticized the government's slow response to the natural disaster. But the point is peopeople apparently felt empowered during this time of crisis and werere able to publish their concerns about their government in a somewhat public fashion--in a blog.
But turning to a different group, who has (according to my NEA research) has been denied political voice, English teachers at the k-12 level, is there anything to their blogs other than the mutterings of the burned out and academically frustrated? Do their blogs demonstrate a critical awareness of issues in education such as gender, race, class, socioeconomic issues, and issues of access to computers in schools? Or are teacher blogs mainly about venting and asking for teaching advice?
My project question, then, is whether teachers reflect on these critical issues or something else such as curricular concerns or simply want to vent on a blog. One related question will be whether blogs are as some conservatives say, hopelessly personal and are akin to those creative writing projects those un-disciplined writing teachers assign to corrupt the youth. And what are we to make of those silly links? Are they simply a distraction to the blog or do they serve some purpose?
Blogs have also been criticized as being rather breezy and inclined to changes in subject matter. Some critics have stated that blogs are pure digression.
I hope to show in my blog and the blogs I study that these criticisms are not totally true and that there are some interesting aspects to blogs.
But first, I want to explain about my 'lense' in this project. How will I be evaluating these blogs and what are my preconceived notions about what teacher blogs should accomplish? I need to explain the phrase "critical awareness" and where I got it.
