In keeping with the discourse of our last seminar, I thought I'd write a few, slaphazard thoughts about learning, education, pedagogy, etc. and the role that blogging has played so far in our class and to some extent our learning, at least from my perspective. I'm going to unashamedly announce that I'm all for this plural, dialogic type of learning for a few reasons. I should also probably admit that I'm very distrustful of mainstream, topdown schooling. If anyone has some spare time, read a few chapters of John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education. It probably has little relevance in this space but 'tis interesting at least.
One of the more interesting points raised in last week's seminar was that by our teacher/lecturer Melissa Hardie. Basically she mentioned that there was a tendency in this season's class to write in more academic, formal style. Which is probably true, my blogs so far, apart from a few exceptions, have been in some ways formal, if at least a bit more personal(mind, I don't think simply by using pronouns and inserting yourself into what you write makes it any less formal or academic, at least in terms of circulating ideas). What I will say though, is that the Internet in all of its forms is a site of social performance. That is, we upload pictures and comments and essays and hyperlinks in either the knowledge or the hope that someone will look at them. And like all good performers we perform to our audience. Which is each other and the teacher. Therefore I think the micro-environment these blogs occupy encourages us to write in a formal, albeit friendly, style. At least that's my feeling, one great thing is the kind of liberation you get writing these blogs. I think also though, and I know I've certainly felt it to begin with, there's a kind of performance anxiety (not in the sexual way but if blogs make you feel that there's probably some deeper psychological trauma happening somewhere) happening at an intellectual level. As someone mentioned in class, you can say throwaway sentence to sound well-informed safe in the knowledge that everyone will forget by the time you've stopped speaking, assuming they're paying attention to begin with. With a blog your thoughts are there, more or less permanently, present until you delete them.
Those are more or less my big (and probably unoriginal and ungood :P) ideas on blogging and how it works. Seeing as this is a blog on networking, and educational networking (although there are times when I think the whole point of being at University is to accumulate piles of nepotism to expend later when you graduate and need coin) and I am in a free associative mood, here's a link to Zadie Smith's review of The Social Network. Not that Facebook is a big part of this course so far, but we quite easily could have had single discussion group for this subject as opposed to seperate, disparate blogs. I'm glad we didn't mind, but that could quite easily have been an option.
