Category Archives: blogging

Judged by Live Journal

blogging, thinking out loud

I keep several blogs in addition to this one.  One of them serves as the reflexive journal for my research project.  Since I wanted choices about privacy and sharing, I went with Live Journal.  I have been using it for the past year and am happy with it.  My only friend is my advisor because I started the journal as a class assignment so she needed access.  But, now my posts are completely private.

I had not posted for awhile but now that the proposal process is heating up, I wanted to record some thoughts and questions.  When I logged in, my LJ homepage informed me that I “only” have one friend.  And then helpfully provided a link to organizations where I presumably could find friends.  It was like having your mother appear at the door of room, urging you to get out and meet some people, maybe join a club or something.

But, I have LOTS of friends, I wanted to say to LJ.  And, if I don’t, it’s because I’m happy with it that way.  I don’t want to discuss model rockets or the best recipes for meatloaf…at least not here.  I actually do that other places but LJ is where I just want to tuck myself in the corner, shielding my paper from others’ views and write.  In an increasingly public world, we may need to carve out space for private thoughts in the network.  That’s what I’ve done in LJ; I just didn’t expect to be judged wanting because of that desire for privacy.

Where’s the Line?

blogging, journalism

May Heath Ledger rest in peace.   Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

I think I heard about the death of Heath Ledger on the news last evening.  Now, this evening, Larry King is covering it on CNN, and the correspondents keep condemning the blogs for spreading bad information.  After hearing it for about the fourth time, I decided to go see what the blogs were saying.

What I discovered was an article in the Huffington Post about how websites really broke this story.  Here’s the one that’s claiming to have broken the story.  So, I guess that’s what they mainstream folks are really steamed about.  The blogs beat them to it.

On blogging, communities, etc.

blogging, Education

I was sort of surprised when I came to this blog only to discover that I haven’t posted since early June.  I have plenty of excuses; the main one is that I’ve been doing a lot of posting over at the Classroom 2.0 community at ning.com.  After years of sending my posts into cyberspace and getting little or no feedback, I posted at Classroom 2.0 and got immediate feedback.  So, that’s where I’ve been doing my work.  There are, however, things I want to write that may be of larger interest so I’m not ready to shut down this blog yet, or my personal one over at Simply Karen.

My other excuse is that I’ve been getting my church up and running with Web 2.0.  I set up the blog for them and have been trying to add audio and video in anticipation of this week’s unveiling.

Now, I’m sitting at the last keynote for Ed-Media 2007.  I spent yesterday at the conference.  There’s lots of energy among these mostly higher education folks.  But I’m struck by the fact that, in terms of technology, they are in exactly the same boat as K-12.  They get that the technology is out there, that our students are living in the world, but they haven’t figured out how to use it any better than the folks in the elementary and secondary classrooms.  I attended several presentations that discussed how to build a better portal or course management system to serve the needs of teachers and students.  I also chose two of the invited speakers.  John Cook discussed his work in the UK with Reusable Learning Objects.  And Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris described their work with handhelds.   But the only problem is that these are still pretty tech-centered.  There weren’t any compelling reasons for a non-techie teacher to adopt the technologies.

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence | InfoWorld | News | 2007-03-06 | By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

blogging, Media

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

From InfoWorld, an article describing the French government’s attempt to reign in citizen journalists by making it an offense for anyone to film and distribute acts of violence unless they are sanctioned journalists. So, they are trying to unblur the very blurry lines between bloggers and journalists. I think along with that law, they should prohibit these sanctioned journalists from blogging. It might be too confusing for their citizens to distinguish between the real and the possibly not-real. That’s assuming, of course, that the journalists are always reporting what’s real.

tags technorati :
tags technorati :

Learning Contract Update

adult learning, blogging, documentary film, learning contract

I will admit up front that I am procrastinating.  I *should* be doing some bibliography work for my media literacy research project.  Instead, I am doing everything else–watching Triumph of the Will, canceling my cell phone, doing laundry.  It is amazing how much I get done when I am procrastinating!  Is there some adult learning principle at work here?  What we learn we were are supposed to be learning something else?

Anyway, as part of that procrastination, I thought I would doing a learning contract update.  I have taken the first steps towards learning Final Cut Pro.  I am pretty happy with my first movie and got lots of positive feedback from the class.  This weekend, I want to dig into some of the Lewis and Clark footage I’ve got.  I’m considering doing something that combines footage from our trip with excerpts from my journal and the L&C journals.  Contrast their journey with ours.  First, though, I need to get a look at what’s there.  It’s been seven or eight years since we took the trip.  I reviewed some of the footage this summer, but need to go back through it with a “cinematographer’s” eye.

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