A few days ago, I set up my bloglines account, and today, after adding some friends’ blogs and such, I got up to 67 feeds, which is a bit ridiculous. Of course, not all of these are “blogs” (as of now, 4 feeds are from comics websites), and many of the blogs I feed from are friends who post so rarely I don’t know if I should count them, but I guess I can officially say I read 60+ blogs (not even counting my friends’ posts I read on livejournal).
So, playing around on bloglines, it occurs to me that I can find out who subscribes to the feed to this blog. The wonderful thing about social networks online is that you can find out who knows you (even if you don’t know them). I knew Kevin Brooks (at NDSU) read my blog, but I didn’t know his blog Ten Minutes a Day, so I got a chance to read it, and to find out that his masters students are keeping blogs too. Brooks writes writes:
I was saying to Betsy the other day that having 10 new TAs does make me nervous; I don’t know if I can give all of them the individual feedback that would probably help them more than general discussions of teaching. The first time I taught the course, there were 12 new TAs, and a few were struggling in ways that I didn’t realize until too late. Last year there were only 4 new TAs, and the semester went quite smoothly. How d’ya like that: teacher-student ratio probably makes a difference. Well I don’t want to sound like some pie-in-the-sky technophile, I do think encouraging everybody to blog might be one way I can give more individualized feedback. And, if this isn’t being similarly overly adjectively optimistic, I bet that a lot of them will figure out ways to improve their teaching via blogging–I think I see it happening already.
You can check out Brooks’ bloglines and click on “TA Strategies” to see the blogs of his TAs. The blogs seem rich in personal experience and reflection on teaching — and makes me wish I had spent more time here reflecting on my individual teaching practices and personal teaching experiences. But I suppose that’s not how this blog started out.
I have noticed, though, that I have started getting a little more personal on this blog, and a little less attached to my personal blog. As I consider my “next steps” in the blogosphere (buying my own webspace?), I wonder about merging the two, or continuing to keep them separate. Sometimes, though, I realize that something that is personal, reflective, and academic belongs on both blogs.
This post seems to be a bit…collagist?…in that it’s lacking coherence, but I’m kinda geeking out about the ability to just find interesting new connections and fascinating new things to read on the Internet.
TA Blogs: Ready Reflection or Resistance?
Turns out that my students in WR 222 think online posting would be nice for other students who might be shy to talk in class, but nearly all said that for themselves, online posting is irrelevant busy-work. So, the question is, then, would this same attitude apply to grad students? My unscientific observation so far is that the older a student is, the more readily he or she will blog about ideas. Or maybe it’s that the older a student is, the more likely s/he is to be really engaged, and really engaged people are the ones who blog readily?