Anticipated Time Commitment - Five minutes, right now.
Your Area of Counsel: College English professor starting blog with his honors class, small college, first blog, no pre-existing conditions. ;-)
Blogging Platform: Free Blogs(??) - recommending Qumana for cross platform posting ease. If students have or start their own blogs, Q will make it easy to blog to the class blog and their blogs from one spot. Other benefits--offline blogging, easy ad integration if desired, easy tagging.
Class Currently Engaged In? Reading The Godfather, Jews Without Money, The Joyluck Club (immigrant novel) So the blog will be about the books and how to write about them.
Compensation: A link, a smile, lots of love, and a $10 amazon gift certificate to the 25th caller OR the best idea OR the person who works the hardest to get my friend the best of what he needs. Leave in comments and email me any extras to jeneane DOT sessum AT gmail DOT com.
Questions to You:
What recommendations, advice, pointers, and links do you think would serve Jerry well in getting his class blog off the ground? E.G., What to expect? What to do/not do? Who to read? Good models for this? What to expect? What great links to you know that would help college students WRITE, and who should they be READING? How to accomplish the art and science of blogging/writing in faster, cheaper, easier, hipper ways?
Where's the go-to stuff for blogging from academia? (Nancy White, thoughts?) BlogHer CEs, any pointers in addition to our education/academia blogrolled blogs?
What are some great college-student bloggers for Jerry to point his students to? Where are the masters?
What about the REST of the college -- since this is the first blog, there's nothing to align with. Is that good, bad, or neither?
What Essential Tools and Fun Stuff - Web 2.0 goodies that will make for a richer experience?
What About Social Networks: Embrace or steer clear? How to incorporate them or not?
What are the necessary things for Jerry to know about blogs about books and writing? (Craig, thoughts?) Goodness yummy, as in: wood s lot.
How about off the wall ideas to consider. EXAMPLE: What about students writing their own books online (Dr. Weinberger, any advice?), what about pulling them into something like Lulu and creating a bottom up bookstore where students are selling (and buying) student and teacher-written books, rather than the traditional college bookstore model where students can only buy hard cover texts written by the experts? What if a college blog could become a profit center for a university? Is it worth doing? Is it worth caring? I'm sure someone is doing it. Someone's doing everything.
Other things?
Tags: college, english, professor, blogging, tech, web2.0, education, advisory board = Powered by Qumana
