Blog of Jami Bryan

At some point during the ELI Conference this week, I decided that I needed to blog along with my students in LIBS101. I often say that I won’t ask anything of my staff that I wouldn’t do myself - so why should my relationship with my students be any different? Why should they blog when I don’t?

Now, of course, I maintain the course blog as the instructor. But that is more about course management and instructional content than about what is so personal and intimate about “blogging”. It is about what the technology of the blog makes possible and not about being a voice among voices in the larger community.

In a related “awakening” this week, I also decided that I would try to take my course along with my students. While this is not entirely possible or desirable (I have a feeling I would have a decided advantage on the Final Exam!), my goal is to try the blogging assignments out for myself. My students have to post an introduction, a topic and 14 entries for their Pathfinder Project, and a farewell. I intend to do the same.

The decision to blog seems sound to me. The decision to do my own Pathfinder Project is one I am not entirely sure about. I can see some great value in experiencing the course from another angle, but I also don’t want my project to over-influence the projects of the students. There may be some ways around this, such as posting after the due dates or not aggregating my posts to the course blog. I’ll have to work this out and will ask for student input.

As this is my first post, I feel like I should give some intro or background - that I should be setting the scene a bit. But I think I will save that for later. And I will have lots to post about ELI as soon as it all forms in my head (I haven’t had much time for reflection since I got back). Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 6:26 pm and is filed under libs101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.