Got my first “comment spam” Friday … from a Steven Fergusson (ip 207.21.148.174) … who felt the need to inform everyone that ” Today is my Birthday :-)… ” and associate it with the A different tune post from October 2003.

This is like writing graffiti on a bathroom wall, only it is a lot easier to clean up. I don’t “get” physical world graffiti any more that I “get” comment spam. Bye bye Mr. Fergusson.
 
 

It seems logical to me that blogging is a tool that could be used to improve writing in the classroom. And I tried it spring quarter with not enough thought, perhaps, because the results were uneven.

I’ve been looking around the net for ideas on how to integrate blogs into the classroom, because I want to use them with my first undergraduate class in spring 2005.

I found this article in First Monday that explores the use of “blogs” in the classroom — as a tool to enhance literacy. The author also notes that statistics suggest as much as 40% of those using this technology are under 20. That sounds good for my spring demographic.
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We had an anthropologist from the University of California Irvine — Bonnie A. Nardi — up for a lecture at the end of Spring Quarter. She had done some research with a small cohort of bloggers, seeking to understand why people blog.

Most of these folks were writing personal journals. A few were writing subject-oriented blogs.

She didn’t find a clear-cut answer to the question. But her research made me wonder, not for the first time: is this a technology or a medium?
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