Taking a break from writing a conference paper to update Pedablogue. In the process, I'll take this opportunity to reflect on the blog...so file this post under "Pedablogy"....

+ I updated my "Sites that Cite" page by running a Copernic process...and imagine my surprise when the number of results DOUBLED to around 600. I think my attempt at an "objective" or "depoliticized" or even "low maintenance" method of blogrolling is ineffective. Too many of the results in the search engine are redundant; many are "new" only because they've been moved or archived in other people's blogs.

+ One surprising result in my review of sites that link to Pedablogue: I've been' Wiki'd! It appears that an English class in "Blogs and Wikis" at Bemidji State U is compiling a "wiki" on blogging -- and "PedaBlogs" are a term their community is collaboratively defining. They define "PedaBlogs" as "Blogs and blogging for teachers by teachers" -- which would distinguish it, I think, from "edublogs" which are blogs related to education -- or used in education -- in a more general sense. Interesting -- have I participated in coining a new term?

+ When I get back from the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, I'm co-presenting (with Dennis Jerz) on "Teaching and Weblogs" to our campus' "Teaching and Learning Forums." We haven't collaborated yet, but I suspect Dr. Jerz will define blogs to the uninitiated, do a little show and tell of our New Media Journalism site (in addition to his own brilliant blog, naturally), and discuss blogging in the classroom. Although I did use blogs when I taught Internet Journalism in Spring 2001, there was no central blog server and virtually all those student blogs have evaporated. We now have better net access on campus, and Moveable Type blogs are free for everyone who asks (I know that this makes others out there jealous and that our community-in-development is an example of a edublog community par example). Dennis Jerz is master of this domain and Pedablogue resides on it. I personally haven't used blogging directly in the classroom for quite awhile, so I will likely just talk about blogging as a form of scholarship, what it means for me to blog in my role as educator, and maybe raise issues connected to public autobiography and the scholarship of teaching. But, of course, there are a lot of cross-overs here. As a teacher, I do read my students blogs routinely (it's at the point where I have to pull headlines into an RSS feed reader to follow all the conversations) -- and I post advice (and silly comments, too) to students regularly there...I know from some of my favorite comments on this site that the students are often reading my postings, too, even if they're not teachers-in-training. (Which suddenly makes me wonder how well blogging can be utilized as a tool for student advising...could I post job tips (like I do in my journalism newsletter), thoughts about the objectives of the major, and updates about coming registration issues and the like? would students even visit such a blog? how much work would it add to my load -- or could it save time somehow?).

Well, now I'm obviously just pontificating and musing aloud ...at risk of boring web visitors, I'll probably be blogging even more ideas about the presentation -- and links I find (like this great one by Professor Bainbridge about the legitimacy of weblogs as scholarship) -- as time permits. But right now I have to go back to working on my conference paper on William Castle's The Tingler! And a word of warning: I probably won't be posting much else here until I return from the trip at the very end of March.

p.s. If you came to this post hoping for something "Wicked" rather than "Wiki'd" then you might be interested in my new horror fiction book, 100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories, which is available now through most online booksellers. I have a small batch of advanced copies that I'm bringing with me to the ICFA conference, but the book officially debuts at World Horror Convention in Phoenix this April. Exciting!

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