Okay, well obviously I mastered the Blog thing. Now I'm going back and getting caught up on each week and thing. First some of my thoughts on blogs ... they have wonderful value. Look how we're using them for this class.
On the negative side I think some people get really carried away; John Doe's 12,000 word blog on "why to paint walls white" is a hypothetically example. When I've run into those I find myself shaking my head. Why would they think the world cares? I'm going to really monitor myself so I don't follow suit, because I can see how it could snowball.
Another important thing right from the get-go is the risks of "stream of consciousness" blogging. In my former job there was a national search on for a high level executive. Someone stumbled on her Blog and it was the most popular attachment to every email. Fortunately she hadn't said anything really awful or dangerous in her blog, but it just made her look kind of goofy and unprofessional. I try to hammer that home to my young adult children and their friends regularly. And clicking a little box that makes it "private" is not good enough security from the hackers of the world.
Okay, off the soapbox. Setting up the Blog was easy and fun. I've set up a Wiki before and found the process similar. The availability of templates makes the process user-friendly. The instructions that you provided in Raven About for inserting the Avatar were great. It went right in the first time and I didn't have to click around, trial and error, to figure it out. There are still some things I want to change and can see myself continuing to play and adjust. I want to put some time into thinking about applications for our school.
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I have to agree that the risk of just talking to hear yourself becomes greater in a blog than in almost any other online tool except perhaps YouTube, or MySpace. And it is very hard to convince students that you need to be careful what you put online because it never really goes away and can come back and bite you hard. Stuff that seems silly at 20 can cost you a job at 30 --
I have to admit that the user friendly aspects of many of the web20 tools are one of their real draws. I don't have the time or the inclination to learn how to design full-on websites, but I love the ease of using a wiki. It allows me to have real and useful online content in a format that actually works for me and I hope for my audience.
Seems like you are on the right track here. Let us know if there is anything we can help you with.
Ann
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