Work demands has made it difficult for me to fully engage with Week 3. None of my schools have Internet access at the moment so my evenings are spent playing catch-up. I did some of the readings and I had every intention of taking part in the Skype session but I just couldn’t stay awake; 20.00 UK time is 23.00 UAE time Part of the problem is that I find the discussions so stimulating and need an hour to wind down afterwards. Every morning I am awoken by the call to prayer, it is so loud that I feel the Muazzin is calling me directly each morning, which at the moment is at 04.54. I haven’t yet been able to tune-out and nor can I get back to sleep.
In Neil’s latest blog he said that he hadn’t yet found his blog-voice. My problem is my perception of blogging. To me blogs are informative and entertaining. When reading them it feels like you’re relaxing with a cup of tea, having a conversation, an exchange of ideas, with a friend. I know that part of the reason I find it difficult taking blogs seriously is the multimodal aspect of it. This aspect may make blogging easier to read and digest, more enjoyable, a little like ‘tabloid journalism’ as Austin puts it. I feel it also leads to it’s content being taken less seriously, giving it less credibility
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Academic papers, on the other hand, are of a more serious business. It is conducted by ‘experts’ who can back up their research with evidence. In an academic paper the images I expect to see will mostly be in the form of graphs or charts. I know that before the paper is published by journals or academic press it will have been reviewed by other specialists in the field. My search for academic discourses would take me to scholarly articles, not to blogs. Jen’s quote, taken from the Skype transcript that ”sometimes the disciplinarity of language makes things differently accessible to different people” is apt and probably applies to me.
Yet here I am, taking part in the MSc E-Learning course where our work is done online and I’m having trouble coming to terms with the different academic medium used. If the uncanny has to do a with strangeness of framing and borders (quoted by Royle in Bayne 2010) then am I experiencing the uncanny? I’m finding it difficult slotting the two images together – ‘academic’ blogging and scholarly articles. A quick search showed that I am not alone. I found these websites interesting: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/religion-blogosphere/religion-blogosphere-2/ and http://learnerosity.com/2011/02/22/what-kinds-of-academic-blogs-are-out-there/ .
I didn’t find ‘Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies’ an easy read. Like Steph, I found myself doing a lot of googling. And I’m not sure I agree with Kress’ ideas about the forms of representation, still reflecting on that. I’m also pondering how much I gain from Twitter, Synchtube and Skype sessions. Maybe it’s a question of upping my transliteracy skills and making the “unfamiliar familiar”
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I think you raise an interesting point here about the challenge that digital practices, such as blogging, bring to established academic practices. I think it would be useful to think, more specifically, about what you perceive to be the advantages and disadvantages of academic blogging? For me, one of the most profound aspects of the blog is the commenting, which promotes the discussion, sharing, and perhaps construction, of an idea. There is of course reason for caution in the publicising of ideas, and these are highlighted in the two blogs you reference.
You mention here an opposition between the perception of blogs as informal, and the published journal as ‘backed up by evidence’. So do you see the blog as a direct challenge to the scholarly publishing? Your reference to multimodality is also intriguing. How do you think the ideas in the Kress and Thomas papers might relate to this ‘academic legitimacy’ of text and image?
Your description of being woken early also gets me thinking about how our ‘virtual’ experiences are always permeated by, and enmeshed with, the ‘real’ world around us. Online experiences are never in isolation, and perhaps that makes them richer and more diverse!
Hi, an interesting article about the value of blogging in academia can be found on The Guardian Website http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/sep/20/academy-scared-of-blogging?INTCMP=SRCH
Steve Wheeler also writes about it extensively. I can’t find the blog posting right now but once he made a point about blogs (academic blogs) becoming a reliable academic source of information. Quite recently he has posted on why academics/teachers should blog: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2011/10/blogging-about.html Interesting stuff and in my view an opportunity to extend and enhance academic discourse, don’t you think?
Thanks for this Ania. The article was very interesting. I am definitely re-thinking my views on academic blogging.