On Research Blogging

I'm starting to see the limitations of this artificial "barrier" between journal entries and CBook entries. On the one hand, I think it can be highly useful to be able to "dump" things, file things away, in the CBook, but now that I want to write about those quotes I think it would be much easier simply to interleave my comments between quotes, thus mixing other people's "voices" with my own. One solution is to open the blog itself in a new window (like I just did) so I can see the quotes "over there" while writing about them "right here." But I'm not sure that's the best solution.

So, something to keep in mind for the future...

Meanwhile, I posted these quotes from an article I read late last semester on blogging and research. I remember being very excited about this paper because it seemed to justify or foreground much of what I was planning to do with blogs in this course. Now seems like a good time to revisit some of those "bits" and see how they apply.

Quote #1 & #2: True, but I can see how writing on blogs gets "individuated" too in the absence of a clear mandate for everyone to check in, and often, to see what the "larger collective" is up to. In this class, for example, everyone seems to be writing with "the rest of the class" in mind -- in some cases, there's a rhetorical emphasis on direct address ("hello everyone!") in the journal writing -- but I don't know if that translates to real "affiliation" in and among bloggers. The practical upshot of this, I think, is that we need to read each other's writing more often, leaving comments, because I do believe more powerful writing comes from this, having seen evdience of that already in this class. By committing to reading (with focus, attention, concern), we can build the kinds of "authentic, tangible" audiences otherwise lacking in most school-based writing.

#3: Blogging as "memory extension work" makes sense to me. Putting the CBook in "conversation" with journal writing is one way to formalize that memory work -- that's the idea (and the ideal) at least. It's nice to think that the blog (and now, 4 years after this article was written, there are other available digital tools, like FB and MS) can "reveal a structure" to the kinds of searching and path-traveling that we do when we explore and develop ideas. I'm not sure this works in practice, though, or at least I wonder if the knowledge "structure" is defined well enough to be at all discernable in the mass of stuff that tends to show up on a research blog. What's great about the blog as a research tool is that it works as an archive (database) tool that CAN be organized in such a way that narratives and structures appear, but I think this requires a second degree or level or *ordering* that is not necessarily inherent to the blog structure itself. I don't think "blogging" produces the "audit trails" so much as bloggers (through labeling and time-stamping, for example) can CREATE trails in the otherwise tangled undergrowth of their own searching.

#4, 5, 6, 7: In many cases (in this class), some of the optimistic language in these passages is bearing out. I sense (and understand from reflection writing) that people are writing "for real" and not doing the kinds of "pretend" research they might have done if offered a more conventional research paper assignment. My own research questions on the topic of research blogging would be: Does research blogging (CBook + Journal) actually promote "reflection on one's knowledge trails" and if so, how does it manifest? What does that "reflection" look like? How can it be measured?

It would be nice to get student responses to these and other questions. Obviously I'm using this course to promote the idea of "beginning from significant problems" in one's research rather than, well, beginning (late) with a canned topic because you think the prof will "like" it. The question, though, is how much does the blog component of this course help or hinder that larger course objective? Does the CBook (along with the journal) facilitate the creation of knowledge "structure" or does it get in the way?