Webb’s Media

After the Ivan Tribble articles on the Chronicle of Higher Education, I was getting worried about blogging, academic or otherwise. Rebecca Goetz’s Do Not Fear the Blog highlights all the reasons many academic folks continue to blog, despite Ivan’s warnings.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, the anonymous anti-blogging articles. Of course, it’s everyone prerogative to maintain his/her privacy. But why cloak oneself in secrecy while railing against one of the most public forms of expression? The fact that Rebecca Goetz puts herself and her blog out for the greater academic community is testament to the one of the benefits blogging brings: confidence and self-assurance (is that redundant?) Do universities want professors who are so afraid of public critique they are willing to share nothing?

All throughout education, from K-12 to higher ed, there has been a strong push to integrate technology into education. With the previous posts coming out against academic blogging, one has to beg the question—do administrations REALLY want the type of paradigm shift that new technologies represent, or do they just want professors yapping on in the front of the classroom with a powerpoint instead of overheads to impress students who are paying more for a year’s tuition than they’ll typically make in their year following graduation.

That being said, Gene Roche’s comment on Garnder’s blog is worth considering. Every person who keeps a blog should think carefully about what they are saying publicly and who will know they’re saying it. There is no way around it. Represent yourself in a way that if your boss, mother, students, etc were reading, you would feel comfortable if they knew what you said. If someone doesn’t want to hire you for what you say, it probably wasn’t going to be a good match anyway.

Technorati Tags: academic blogging