Blogging in the Tibetan Renaissance Course
Introduction
"Blog" is short for "web-log." Blogs have recently enjoyed explosive growth on the Web due to the emergence of new software programs that allow participants to easily post Web pages (or "blogs") without the slightest technical knowledge or resources. Their popularity can be summed up in terms of their capacity for complete personalization, easy self-publication and the reception of reader input. Firstly, personalization: blogs can be about anything and in any format. The whole point of blogs is that you don't have to be constrained by someone else's expectations and constraints, but rather can speak out as you like in the way you like. Secondly, self-publication: blog technology allows for easy posting of Web sites that can then reach a huge, and unknown audience through the power of the Web. Suddenly anyone can post their materials and potentially reach huge numbers of people. Thirdly, reader reception: blog technology also enables readers to just as easily post responses and comments to your blogs, so that dialogs and heterologs can evolve, even as you remain in control of your space. See Wired magazine for a short article about the blogging phenomena.
So what does this have to do with academics and classes? I believe it is potentially of great value because it provides students an informal space that they control to record their ongoing thoughts, interpretations and observations of any type about the course without the formal constraints of an analytical paper. In addition, unlike discussion forums, one student's thoughts are collected together for easy reference, thereby enabling a semester long inquiry to be recorded in personalized form as a complement to more formal written products.
So what do you write? Whatever you want to - that's the point. It can be informal, it can reflect on the course structure, last night's class, readings, anything, though in general it should of course keep to the topic of the course and attempt to be of intellectual interest. So whatever you want to, and in whatever form you want to, but within those broad limits.
Class blogs
We are initially using the resources of www.livejournal.com for our blogging. Below is a list of class participant blogs.