Techfoot

Gardner Writes >> My New Year’s Blogging Resolutions

I love to walk around the campus on the first day of the new semester. From the snippets of conversation it’s obvious that many students have a genuine sense of excitement about the new things they’ll learn, the books they’ll be reading and the people that they’ll meet. This is my 49th semester opening day in my career in higher education, and I’m struck by the gift that the academic calendar gives us–that gift of a fresh start. New books, new classes–maybe even a new commitment to blogging.

I’m inspired by the surge of creativity emanating from Fredricksburg, particularly now that Gardner has begun to focus more energy on the care and feeding of his blog:

I resolve to blog at least once a day. Short or long, ill- or well-considered, focused or rambling, a post is better than silence, and I have learned to my cost how difficult it is to sustain momentum when I skip a day, or two, or ten. This blog has been a crucial part of my own teaching and learning for over three years now. It deserves more care and feeding than I’ve been giving it. Nothing against slow-blogging and its magnificent practitioners–but I feel I need the daily discipline.

Gardner’s recent posts have re-awakened a desire to get back in the game and start participating in the conversation again. I’d spent the last semester down in the weeds trying to improve some of the nitty-gritty details of the way we manage time, deliver services and organize information. (Or, as Jon Udell calls it in his IT Conversations interview with Gardner , taking a “more tempered approach” toward being a change agent and advocate for transformation.)

In many ways, the academic calendar is a historical artifact that sucks the life out of authentic learning. But the fact that twice a year we have the chance to start over, however symbolically, is pretty cool. No promises, but I’m going to hit the post button.

I’ve been looking for an reason to get back to blogging, and spending some time with Jon Udell at the Educause Seminars for Academic Computing helped provide the motivation to stop looking and start posting. In a presentation on disruptive technologies, Jon made the point that, for all practical purposes, you are who Google says you are. Current job candidates can expect that potential employers will Google them, review their Facebook and MySpace sites and use that information in the selection process. Our potential students tell me that they extensively searched faculty members as they chose their graduate school.

In the face of that reality, it makes sense to ask some questions: what is my current digital presence? Is it helping me or hurting me in accomplishing my goals? If it’s not helping me, what can I do to improve the chances that it will help in the future?

Jon’s session inspired me to revisit my own digital presence–and it’s not at all what I would like to be. My blog provided my primary way of actively creating my digital identity. When I was doing it well, it provided a persistent narrative of the things that are important to my personal agenda. Over time, a blog developed a kind of internal coherence where I reflected on a set of ideas and issues that I was interested in. It became the basis of a small community of colleagues who were interested in some of the same things I was interested in. For multiple reasons I let it die last semester while I focused on some non-computer activities.

When I Google “Gene Roche”, which is not something that I do often, my blog still comes up first. (It took a long time for me to displace character actor Eugene Roche). But the blog itself certainly doesn’t inspire much confidence in my ongoing activity as a an active learner/teacher and citizen of the digital universe. I need to do something to change that.

There was a lot of rich discussion during the session about how we help prepare students to deal with the realities of their digital reputations. (That their digital reputations will be even more important to them seems indisputable.) For all their experience with technology tools, most students need lots of support and guidance from faculty to learn to collaborate and participate in the complex relationships that the technology makes possible. It seems to me that one of the most important goals of the 21st century university will be to help students choose the important conversations and collaborations in which want to be participants. Clearly we can’t be much help to students if we don’t invest to make the time to do it ourselves.

The Latest on Virginia Tech, From Wikipedia – New York Times: “”

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the Wikipedia served as “an essential news source for hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet trying to understand the shootings at Virginia Tech University.

The Times reports that at least 2074 editors created a polished, detailed article with more than 140 footnotes, sidebars and timelines. More than 750,000 visitors–an average of 4 per second–visited the site during the first two days after the shooting. The Roanoke Times noted that Wikipedia had “emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event. The Wikipedia served similar purposes during the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004 and the London bombings in 2005.

Wikipedia isn’t a newspaper. As the Times article notes:

Professional news is the place to get the facts on the ground — after all, that’s where Wikipedia contributors are getting their information, too,” said Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator. “Wikipedia distinguishes itself by the ability to bring all the facts, and useful background information, together in one place.

In discussing the construction of the Virginia Tech article, the Times piece gives some good insights into editing process.