During lunch, watchsnow mentioned that she felt blogs at Hong Kong started as personal journal type. She herself actually didn’t have any expereince with the fiter type of blogs. We then did some research to confirm that.

From wikipedia:

目前，很多香港互聯網使用者都熱衷撰寫網誌。然而，網誌的主要使用方式及方向亦有異於其他地區，香港使用者主要將網誌服務當作日記使用，亦不會把內容公開。未經查證的資料指，香港最多人使用的網誌服務是Xanga或Yahoo BLOG，其他如Blogger、MSN Spaces、無名小站等在其他地區流行的網誌服務則較少香港人使用。

Based on another interesting webiste watchsnow recommend to me

隨著Xanga的興起，香港不少青少年均以Xanga作為網上日記，而Xanga的留言及blogring功能等亦令它可作社交和聯誼用途。及後Yahoo blog吸引了不少藝人開blog，由於藝人網誌多以相片為主，加上網民以為可藉此與偶像交流，故這類網誌的點擊率普遍較高。

I couldn’t help but wonder what implications this blogging culture has for local students. Is it possible that many students perceive blogs mainly as a channel to broadcast personal events? Will students jump to the conclusion that blogs are not for them once they exclude themselves from the journal-writing type? Or does it mean that HK students might have more difficulty adapting to academic blogs – blogs more on ideas and critical thinking?

The image encompasses the seemingly paradoxical mixture of private and public that is evident in weblogs. They are enclosed and private spaces that allow the writer to cultivate an autonomous voice, And yet they are visible, open spaces that encourage linking and conversations.

Thus there exists a tension between what’s private and what’s public. However it is still not clear how these two dimensions affect each other, and more importantly, how the interplay between the private and public spheres affect the thinking and writing process.

They also pointed out that compared to formal academic work, blogs are concise, spontaneous and timely. They usually presenting half-thought, naked ideas without thought-out arguments or structure. However, blogs can serve as a great writing tool since they could “elucidate the constant flow of thought”, capture and store the fleeting sparkles of thoughts otherwise might be lost. I can’t agree more on this one. That’s why I name my blog “intellectual flakes”. To me, these blog entries are fragmented and light-weight.

“… when blogging is used by teachers in a prescriptive way, such as, ‘write a blog on the subject of XXX’, the value of blogging is very much constrained and it becomes another writing exercise. As many writers have noted, blogging is, at its best, a conversation and needs a purpose and an audience, but not prescribed topics.” ( Mason & Rennie, 2006. p. 15)

Downes (2004) also maintained that compulsory blog-writing was at odds with the spontaneous and authentic nature of blogging.

I agree with them. I also want blogging to be sustained and continuous. But the reality is making blogging voluntary and giving students freedom and control don’t guarantee the sustained and continuous practice. Without a suggested topic or areas, students’ writing can be lack of focus and purpose. Yes, the conversation needs a purpose and focus, that’s what glue the community members together. Of course it will the great if the focus and purpose emerge naturally. But a question arises here is how about it doesn’t? What we as educators or researchers can do to facilitate and promote it?

References:

Downes, S. (2004). Educational blogging. Educause Review, 39(5), 14-26.
Mason, R., & Rennie, F. (2006). Elearning: The key concepts. London; New York: Routledge.

The dialog on blog space is enabled by commenting. The problem with commenting is that it tend to be the conversation between individual commenter and the blogger. It will be hard for commenter A to talk to commentor B. In addition, commenting tends to be one-shot affair. Often people just leave comments and never bother or don’t remember to check back. Thus it will be rare to see the sort of back and forth in the dynamic interaction. Another potential problem with commenting is the duplicates. For example, if I read an interesting blog which already has 100 comments. I might not have to go through all the comments or question, but just jump to post my comments or question which might already been raised and addressed.

The social interaction enabled by blogs are highly asymmetrical. If we draw an analogy between discussion forum and a meeting where every participants have equal opportunity to expression their opinion; then blogs are like press conference. The opinion exchanged are centered on the topic initiated by the chair and all the questions/comments are addressed to him/her.

… a well kept journal provokes introspection. It is a liberating and productive outlet for random ideas, thoughts and feelings.

Make this journal private: This stops you from censoring yourself unnecessarily.

The key point to note is not the therapeutic effects of writing in a journal but rather the fact that regular journal keeping will influence the way you think or feel about an specific topic.

One thing is for sure, private journal meant to be read only the the author is easier to write. No worry about grammar, spelling and how the readers might react.

They also summarized the motives for blogging as:

1) update others on activities and whereabouts
2) express opinions to influence others
3) seek others’ opinions and feedback
4) think by writing
5) release emotional tension

Some of their findings are quite similar to mine. And the paper prompted me to rethink the individual and social dimensions of blogging. The individual and social dimensions of blogging can be illustrated as the following:

In this way, any individual-oriented motive for blogging is intertwined with a social motive. It might be very interesting to explore into the interplay of these two dimensions.

Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., & Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary? Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, 222-231.

a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.

I doubt that many of the blog people are in th habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs.

OK, I admit I am lousy at grammar. Does that mean I am meant to be a blogger? And yes blogs tend to be fragmented and miscellaneous, but they are not random. They can be organized to form more lengthy and coherent writing. His comments on Google is even more cynical and funny:

Google is, in fact, the device that gives you thousands of “hits” (which may or may not be relevant) in no very useful order.

Speed is of the essence to Google boosters, just as it is to consumers of fast “food”, but, as with fast food, rubbish is rubbish, no manner how speedily it is delivered.

I am just curious what search engine Gorman use. Within the morass of information, how can people survive without it. Considering the market share of Google as search engine, I guess majority of people are consuming intellectual junk food by Gorman’s standard.

Reference: Revenge of the Blog People! By: Gorman, Michael. Library Journal, 2/15/2005, Vol. 130 Issue 3, p44-44,

The online community set on discussion forum are usually clearly bounded communities with authentication, registration, etc. The new type of online community in blogosphere makes it imperative to study the change in individual and collective identify, power and control. The balance between the individual and the group has to be redefined.

White also categorised blog community into three groups: one blog centric, topic centric and boundaried community. For each type, the power structure and community dynamics are different. She further contrast the three categories from the perspective of technical architecture, social architecture and content.

However, the blog-supported learning community in my study can’t fit into any of the category. It’s kinda like both single blog centric and topic-centric. The community blog serves the role as the central node of the community. But this central role was not organically emergent, but initiated in a top-down fashion. In addition to the tension between group and individual blogger, the tension between top-down intervention and bottom-up emergence of community also becomes complicated in blog community.

Robin Hamman also categorized blog community into three kinds: closed blogs, blogs as conduit of information and blog as conversation. In light of this,  the blog-supported community among preservice teachers in my study seems both closed blogs and blogs as conversation.