Has it been almost a week since last week’s tutorial? How did that happen? Obviously I meant to set a much better example for everyone and blog here earlier than the night before this week’s tute. Luckily I made some quick notes just after the class last week, so I have some recollection of what I wanted to say as a follow up to the discussion.
For the benefit of people who couldn’t make it to last week’s tutorial, I wanted to repeat my clarification of the advice about referencing for the second assignment. Initially, I advised that everyone should include a list of references in the QUT Harvard style at the end of each blog post. After a discussion with the other tutor, Rosanna, we figured out that it wasn’t necessary for everyone to be so formal about referencing–at least on the blogs. However, when everyone compiles their best three blog posts for submission in the writing template provided, that will be the place to provide a list of references in the QUT Harvard style.
As many students pointed out, it did seem a bit unusual to have to include a list of references at the end of a blog post. There are, of course, other ways to acknowledge someone else’s work that you might use to inform your blog posts, such as links, for example. Another solution to the question of references is one provided by KL Fair, a student in my 11.30 Wednesday tutorial. KL created a page on her blog just for references. I thought this was an ingenious solution to a problem she identified: a conflict between her perception of the blog as a particular form and what she had been instructed to do in class. Personally, I have no objection to anyone questioning any instruction, especially when such a creative solution is found as a result.
KL’s blog is just one of the first blogs that students from KCB201 will be creating and posting to over the next few weeks. Last week I sent around an email asking everyone in my class to send me the URL of their blogs as they became confident enough to share their work with the rest of the class and, potentially, the world. I created my own extra page titled ‘Blog Roll‘, so that as everyone sends me their URL I’ll add them to the list and everyone can look up one another’s blog and subscribe to their RSS feeds via the Google Reader accounts we set up a couple of weeks ago. If you’re still a bit shy about publishing your thoughts online, having a look at your classmates blogs is one way to become more comfortable with the whole exercise; it always helps to see what someone else has done.
I’m getting close to 500 words now and I haven’t even said anything about Citizen Journalism, which was the subject of both of the readings we discussed in the tutorial: Chapter 4 from Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond and Chapter 8 from the 3rd edition of New Media. I really only have space to say that I thought both chapters built upon the idea of produsage and allowed for a discussion of a ‘real world’ instance of that theory at work.
Tags: Blogs, Citizen Journalism, Referencing
