General Applications of Weblogs

Blogs first emerged in the mid-1990s, and their growth since then has been explosive. It's also seen the rapid division of blogs into various genres.

The first of these might be called Hunter-Gatherers. Such blogs result from Web searches that bring useful or entertaining sites into one convenient spot. Hunter-gatherer blogs were the original genre, and their descendants still include that function even when they're more concerned about the individual blogger than anything else.

The current major genre might be called the introvert blog--it's all about the author's personal life. One of the striking aspects of this genre is the author's denigration of himself: the blog is purported to be "chaos," "random," "neurotic," and generally disorganized.

The content bears this out; posts are often highly self-critical, describing work not done, tests flunked, relationships failed. Even long gaps in the blogging record require mention and apology. Against this background, occasional highlights appear: a wonderful concert attended, a happy dinner with family, a new job. No need to single out any examples; they're all over the blogosphere.

The audience for such blogs consists, I'd guess, of the author and a small number of friends, who will sometimes post encouraging responses. The Book of Job somehow springs to mind.

Another kind of personal record is in the extrovert blog, in which the author pays more attention to the surroundings. A great example is Big White Guy in Hong Kong, a Canadian expat's funny and opinionated view of life in his adopted city.

Another genre is the job blog, in which the focus is on events at work. Depending on your interest in the job, this can be boring or fascinating. One of my favourites in this genre is Oh Jen Jen's It's a Zoo Out There. She's a medical officer at Changi General Hospital in Singapore. Last spring her blog was a mesmerizing narrative of the hospital's struggle to contain SARS--a struggle that cost the lives of several admired colleagues. Dr. Oh's blog is clearly aimed at her colleagues, but during the height of the SARS outbreak she was being read around the world. Now she's back to routine emergency-room problems and talking about her favourite TV programs.

The specialist blog can be a variant of the job blog, but the specialty may be just one aspect of the job, or a hobby. The specialist is clearly speaking to colleagues, comfortable with a technical vocabulary that may baffle outsiders. Emphasis here is often more on the audience than on the author, with plenty of links to other specialist sites. My site Writing Fiction is an example; I try to provide a convenient spot to get a lot of information on the subject.

A good example of a specialist blogger is Clay Shirky, who writes some very interesting and thoughtful material about Internet communications issues.

Here's one interesting difference between most blogs and introvert blogs: the introvert blogs tend to run long, long paragraphs, while the others tend to present short posts or at least long posts broken up into very short paragraphs.

I suspect that's because the non-introvert blogs are aimed more at the reader, and the author realizes (instinctively or not) that long paragraphs are hard to read on a computer screen. For the same reason, introvert blogs often have designs that make them hard to read--greyish text, for example, on a dark background. The readership is less important here than providing a blog that mirrors the author's feelings.

Advocacy blogs interest me a lot; I first got into blogging by visiting news and advocacy blogs in the run-up to the Iraq War. Advocacy blogs tend to be one-sided (here's my opinion and here are the blogs that agree with me), but a few do invite visitors to check out the evil blogs of the opposition. In any case, they offer a useful service by gathering news stories (and blog posts) from a host of sources and putting them all in one spot.

A good place to get a wide range of advocacy blogs is The Agonist, a Texas-based newsgathering site that offers frequent updates plus a long list of blogs ranging right across the (American) political spectrum. Many advocacy blogs reflect extremist views--for example, The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. Most tend to side with more mainstream views, whether to right or left.

And where in all this do education blogs fit in? Clearly, some of us are very interested in the educational potential of this medium, but blogs often look like a solution in search of a problem. I can see both dull and interesting uses for blogs. Let's start with dull:

Administration. You can post news about your school, department, or class and expect everyone to drop in when the news is still fresh. This can work, but many people don't drop in. An email list can often do the job much better because it doesn't depend on the decisions of the readers.

Less dull is enhancement. You can post items on a blog to offer students more work in a problem area, or even to hold mini-tutorials online with questions and answers. But again this depends on everyone's showing up and asking questions. If you visit my course blog Legal Technicalities, you'll see that my students haven't contributed much. (I made them an offer today—if anyone wants to become a joint author, I'll give them an account. We'll see if anyone takes me up on it.)

Most interesting is the possibility of publishing—putting student work up on the site for the world to see. I like this idea because I want students to experience taking part in the whole world of public discourse. It's the way a society does its thinking. But I can imagine that many teachers would be reluctant to put their students' work up on a blog.

For one thing, it might expose the kids to predators or online stalkers. Not a nice thought. For another, the kids might stir up controversy ("What are you teaching those kids, anyway?"). It may even look like just another time sink, when teachers and students alike are working flat out just to keep up with the regular curriculum.

But if blogs have a future in education, publishing is probably that future. I'd love to hear what others think.