Slides for my session on blogging in the Humanities in the Digital Age workshop at the 2010 AHA annual meeting. http://aha.confex.com/aha/2010/webprogram/Symposium576.html
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Blogging for Teaching and Research
1. Humanities
Blogging for Teaching
and Research
in the Jeremy Boggs
Creative Lead
Center for History and New Media
Digital Age
2. What are Blogs?
Weblogs are database-powered, date-driven,
syndicated web publishing systems. They let you
easily publish “posts” or “articles” to the web, and
notify readers of new content. Readers can subscribe
to your blog, leave comments, or write posts in
response.
4. Great Examples
‣ CUNY Academic Commons (commons.gc.cuny.edu/) - Blog
network for the City University of New York.
‣ UMWBlogs (umwblogs.org) - Blog network for the University
of Mary Washington.
‣ Hypothèses (hypotheses.org) - Research notebooks in the
Social Sciences (France).
‣ Planned Obsolescence by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
6. Group Blogs
‣ Everyone posts to the
same blog, as individual
authors.
‣ Course content is much
more centralized, makes
it a bit easier to manage.
‣ Group blogs may affect
types of assignments,
number of posts/
comments.
7. Individual Blogs
‣ Each individual has her/
his own blog.
‣ Content is much more
decentralized, makes
news readers more
important.
‣ Provides opportunity for
individual identity and
ownership to develop, “A
domain on one’s own.”
8. Blog Planets
‣ A blog planet is a blog
that aggregates and
republishes the content
from other blogs
‣ Useful for small courses,
where students have
individual blogs. Can be
aggregated in a larger
course blog.
10. Self-Installed Blogs
‣ Requires server space,
other skills to install and
maintain.
‣ Much more freedom for
customization; Add
whatever plugins and
themes you wish. Install
as many blogs as you
want.
11. Hosted Blogs
‣ No need for hosting
account or server space;
The blog is hosted for
you.
‣ Little opportunity for
customization, installing
your own plugins and
themes.
‣ Universities increasingly
installing their own
hosted blog systems.
13. The Teacher
‣ Goals—Share course materials and updates, provide students with a space
for students to publish, discuss, experiment with ideas.
‣ Tools
‣ WordPress.com/Edublogs.org
‣ Self-installed blog
‣ ScholarPress Courseware - easy course management
‣ WP Book - turns WP blog into Facebook application
‣ Role Scoper - More granular control over use permissions
‣ User Extra Fields - Add more fields to user registration
14. Courseware
‣ Easy course
management.
‣ Add schedule entries, fill
in bibliography items,
and create assignments
‣ Calendar syndication
15. WP Book
‣ Helps make your blog a
Facebook application
‣ Another way for
students to access
course information
17. User Extra Fields
‣ Plugin that allows you to
add extra fields to user
registration
‣ Useful for:
‣ Biography
‣ Links to other accounts
‣ Images
‣ URLs
18. The Researcher
‣ Goals—Create a space for sharing and reflecting on research process, try
out ideas, publish (and take ownership of) ideas early!
‣ Tools
‣ WordPress.com/Edublogs.org
‣ Self-installed blog
‣ CommentPress
‣ Citation Aggregator
‣ Myriad plugins for footnotes.
‣ News reader