blogtrax

New Literacies

2007-02-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

sampler
Originally uploaded by on-the-run.

Well, hard copy of the book has finally arrived and I think it really works well. There's a really good exploration of Web 2.0 stuff here, and I'm glad to be a part of it! New literacies/digital literacies is really well communicated in this short video which communicates the changing nature of text as well as what happens behind the scenes in html, and with feeds. Not only informative but.. er um.. appropriately presented.

Closed door

2005-11-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

closed door
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

Well, I'm closing down until I start feeling better. I hope that won't be too long!

Writing about...

2005-11-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

for writing
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

Another collection – this time it’s writing tools, sparked by hearing about historian Bettany Hughes talking about the impact of paper on European civilization.

As we know paper was invented by the Chinese - the idea probably traveled down trade routes, collectively referred to as the Silk Road, into the Mediterranean area. Hughes claims that Muslims learnt how to produce paper, and that it was the Moors who introduced paper to Europe from factories in Andalusia.

In a fascinating documentary on Channel4 Hughes traced the Moors and their Islamic society that ruled in Spain for 700 years. She explored the Moorish influence in Mathematics, astronomy and medicine, romantic love, paper, deodorant… Just what we need to counter the current wave of Islam-a-phobia.

All right, so we have new surfaces for writing, new technologies, and, of course blogging. Here’s Alex Halavais writing about blogging. He isolates 4 things that blogs do. According to Alex, blogs:

1.promote communication in dispersed social networks
2.encourage reciprocal communication (feedback through comments, links, and other channels) fulfilling a ‘conversational desire’.
3.accumulate content in small segments, and have a low participation threshold
4.give a relatively open and unfiltered view of thinking-in-progress.

I’ll go with that. Anyone for a 5th?

MOVING ...

2005-05-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

OK I have moved us here so that we can categorise our posts ....

Guy will have a shock wehn e gets back and will have to be like me and learn how to do it ... but it should be worth it I think.

(Hi, Guy!)

Flickr and learning

2005-05-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

I am still not sure about Communities of Practice and I am not sure Affinity Spaces are the answer. The thing is that many of us have used the Communities of Practice model to understand online communities but there is a real probem with notions of membership and boundaries etc which are really not an accurate descriptin of the dynamics which seem at once intensive and dynamic. Temporary coherences. Affinity spaces, first talked about by Gee I think, (and building on his idea of the semiotic domain) evolved as a term around online gaming, but again I m am not sure it is properly transferrable as a model for non gaming online groups, although I, like Michelle Knobel, have also used this term.
In this book, Massey talks about 'constellatons of temporary coherences' in regard to groups of youth meeting - but is not talking about cyberspace, but I think it could be applied to online groups and want to think more on this.

In Flickr people belong to lots of different groups; the whole site does not really constitute a coherent community it is a series of groups.
Individuals in the groups interact with each other and some belong to numbers of groups where they meet again.
They have in jokes, interests and conversations which are thematically dropped and picked up again.
Individuals carry across specific identities and social histories. These are shown multimodally in words and images and in the associations they trace across the groups.
Individuals seem to develop online identities and coherences.
they teach each other.

Some groups are VERY popular and there are some definite stars on the board;movers and shakers who influence.

There are some individuals who start groups which no one joins.
I have seen one big argument and this I think is an unusual occurence although I have spotted this too.

Finally there is this fab new thing I have been invited to join. The Flat Stanley Project is a very exciting idea in my opinion and there is also a blog to go with it.
So it is an example of online learning collaboration across generations. I think itis antastic the way adults are invited to help in the education of children in this way..

Online is good

2005-05-19T01:28:00.000-07:00

I thought that this was really interesting.
It is Anya thinking about what she likes about blogs and it is a little bit of a different list to the one she has put more recently in her newer blog. Just a little sign about developing interests and how we use the web differently to suit different preoccupations in our lives.
I did a similar post here which Kate's comments added to.

I love the way Anya's new blog allows her to categorise and file things so that you can check out thins thematically as well as datewise.
We need to do that with this blog and I will investigate.

Changes in posts

2005-05-19T01:19:00.000-07:00

I realise that my posts, since Guy went to sleep for a while, have been focussing more on meatspace stuff than on the web itself. I realised this because the last post I did on DrJoolz was all about the Internet and seemed very different from what I had been doing for a while.
It is strange but I feel like I SHOULD have been more focused on the web for my blog, but maybe I should just write what I want and how I want.

Types of post

2005-05-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

I have done a lot of different types of post over the last few months.
There have been some which have related very specifically to literacy and an exploration of what a text is.
I have reflected on ideas I have read about or heard about, which have been totally academic related. I have reported on conferences and seminars.
I have written lists of books I want to read - thus showing my orientation towards particular topics and making a decision about what kind of identity I want to present for DrJoolz.
Sometimes I have been reflective about my posts.

So I have worked hard to show myself as academic it seems; but in doing so I have been thinking academically, reflecting on my workand trying to get others to talk with me about the content of my posts. (And academics have often responded.)

I have also used my blog to plot political views during the general election; to put across academic and political views about what is on television; I have even taken the risk and made comments about the wedding of Prince Charles and Chinchilla and made less than respectful noises about the pope. I have therefore used my blog as SOCIAL and POLITICAL COMMENTARY.

I have told stories about me in pictures and in words. I have even told the world my feelings in a very uncharacteristic act of openess. This was a very strange thing to do. I have given lists which reflect my interests, my preferences. I have shown things about my family relationships and those with friends and colleagues. This posts were personal narratives. Showing myself in what I do and in in my depiction of relationships.

More on types of posts next time ...

Meta stuff at last

2005-05-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

It is a long time since Guy last posted here and even longer since I have doneanything on this blog.
At first I elt guilty about not keeping thisgoing but then realised that a lot of what I was doing over on DrJoolz involved quite a bit of thinking about the proces of blogging.
This is a catch up post but also I will from now on try to post something here every few days so that I know things are fresh in my mind.

I have been thinking about how in some ways I have develped a DrJoolz persona whois a little bit different from my identity as a researcher at work, as a colleague, as someone at home with family relationships. Maybe on the blog I present myself as having some kind of coherence; some sort of joined upness. In writing about myselfi am somehow writing myself.I am subject and object of the work; and interestingly because I am writing about blogging I sometimes do stuff soI can blog it.In this way the blog influences my life; it does not simply record aspects of it.
For example on the walk round Sheffield, I only went on that walk to get photos for my blog. Photos like this one.

In taking this walk, I looked at an area of where I live that I had never been to before - even though it is really near it was not part of my daily map.

I have found that using images has made me look around me for visual jokes, for quirky things; even wondering what might be interesting to someone who does not live in England. This is me thinking about audience as well as taking an interest in looking about me in a new way.

When I called this photo 'Addiction' I thought it was funny but also quite poignant.

So I think that blogging has made me do things I would not have done before and it makes me look about the world in new ways.

Now I am resting

2005-04-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

Market entrance, Nizwa, Oman
Originally uploaded by mark8023.

Now I am resting my posting activity over on my own blog, and notblogging for a while, I'll be silent here. But my blogging collaborator will be keeping Blogtrax alive, or even breathing new life into it. So watch this space!

Watching me

2005-03-21T12:12:00.000-08:00

Originally uploaded by krissie p.

My blog is watching me, staring out from the screen at me, and just the other side through the darkness of the pupil, visitors peer in at me. Somehow, perhaps because these blogs are adrift in a sea of millions we can probably guess (or even hope) who may float by, but photo-sharing lets more light in. The visits are upfront. Complete strangers look in, comment and borrow images. I've had my eye on this one for about a week; it haunts me. Now on Blogtrax it has been levered out of Flickr space, appropriated, and repurposed in this meta-world.

In new times

2005-03-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

Reading Don Leu (Handbook of Reading Research, Vol.3) made me think about how the publish-as-you-go literacy research that is at the heart of Blogtrax had a further rationale. Here's Don:

Since literacy is so intimately related to the technologies of informtion and communication as well as the envisionments they inspire, rapidly changing technologies make it difficult, if not impossible to develop a consistent body of research within traditional forums before the technology on which it is based is replaced by an even newer technology. Unless this situation changes, and strategies for publishing research in traditional forums speed up their processes or new forums appear, it is likely that traditional research will play an increasingly less important role in our understanding of new technologies and new literacies.

(Leu, 2000: 24)

So I guess if we're working in the field of new literacies, we need to fully exploit their potential ourselves. Of course, building on what Leu says here, the situation is liquid when the software updates regularly, the users' skill levels and needs change. As we've observed before, the very topic you're studying changes beneath your gaze. And, as you can see from that, the metaphor of the week is the kaleidoscope!

Being brave/ going public

2005-03-16T01:27:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about writing in the public domain, and how mine is mostly hidden between the covers of books and journals in formats which assume a certain kind of readership and address relatively narrow concerns. I don't think I have much else in the public domain (although there's plenty of everyday writing for private, interpersonal or closed groups). So, blogging is another dimension altogether. And it's not really about staring at a blank page, or breaking a long silence, but more like adding a piece to a kaleidoscope of ongoing patterns. Nevertheless there still is a sense in which you are sticking your neck out, gaining public space.

Dr Joolz said that to blog is to be brave. I chuckled at the time, thinking perhaps it was just her way of putting things, but on reflection she's right. Sticking your neck out is brave (although the consequences are unlikely to be guillotining!. It's particularly brave when you broach sensitive or new topics. Dr Joolz's disclosure (15 March) is like that, I think. That's brave and that's going public in a really interesting way. I mean where else could you write something like that?

Lost in the hinterland

2005-03-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

Middle Earth Duck Pond
Originally uploaded by BobJack.

My ephemeral digital posts lengthen with time, expanding with a confidence to say new things, and garnished with a certain recklessness. More involvement with an online community of bloggers, readers (both known and unknown), and Flickr-sharers is a causal factor, put together with an increase in blog consumption. So my/our blogs evolve, including this one, as we develop heteronymic works, discover new voices, new ideas and new skills.

Dr Joolz has talked about the kind of osmotic learning that takes place around blogging: a bit of html, the subtle art of tagging and so on. Recently, I've been wanting to index my posts but found the Blogger advice too dense. Easy to get lost in the hinterland of geek technology. Then I got into Blogstreet, attracted to the neighbourhood/proximity concept, but I find I'm out of my depth there too. And most recently of all I've been looking at RSS feeds but can't quite grasp how they work, or even if I'd have the time or energy to engage with them.

Is this technological hinterland a place to colonise, or is it best left alone if all you're interested in is the writing? The trouble is the writing itself and the technology to write subtley infuse one another. Perhaps, to be lost in the hinterland is to wish for a map.

Presence, popularity and the unknown reader

2005-03-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

Flickr has really started to capture my interest. Although I've assiduously resisted the temptation to add a site meter to my blog, in Flickr the views/comments option is default. I've left it on, so I've become quite stoical about my unpopular gallery of images - averaging around 4/5 views each. Imagine then my excitement about interest in Ruth's Arabic tattoo. I've already noted how it drew more than the usual 0 comments on my blog (!), but on my Flickr, the first tattoo is now up to 34 views! Tagging it tattoo and skinart obviously appeals to a segment of the Flickr audience. Yesterday, I uploaded the third in a series of these tattoo pictures and I was quite amazed to find that the image had 3 views before I even saw it published, and then 9 views in the first 7 minutes (I even noted that on the pic itself, such was my excitement). But then maybe Flickr is a tricker - note I have complete faith in these counts and automatically assume that the huge world wide readership is beating a path to my blog as well. Of course, not! Yet the Flickr viewings are interesting - just assuming that the stats are accurate, those first eager visitors were co-present in the Flickr space, and remain unknown readers, unless, of course, they leave an identifying comment. The same then, at least in theory, in my blogspace where I am present (in various senses of the word), where I must be at least somewhere in the popularity stakes, and I do have unknown readers. So, I was so shocked to be taken seriously here, that I emailed Joolz almost right away, like the child I am :blush: I mean really boasting
{ O }. Yet, in the cold light of day, with a greater sense of objectivity, it's really good that an unknown reader can take you seriously (or laugh with you, if that's what you want).

Vieux jeu

2005-03-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

Is blogging infradig, I wonder? Both Dr Joolz and TT go quiet this weekend and I have to resort to putting new material on Multimodal Matters just so I don't feel alone! Just imagine if you were stranded in cyberspace - cut adrift. But no, Michele is posting so it's OK. And so are all those on my B-list (ah yes, as I noted before, they're not really in my affinity space but they are worth keeping an eye on). I have a new piece by Torill Mortensen (from the Blogosphere), and then there's this, another rather jounalistic piece on blogging.

I've been online most of today, so the post over on my blog is rather serious and reflects on what I've trawled through today. Now it's getting so I can't post without an image. And that's not just because of a TT comment, it just doesn't really look quite right. I can do an image-less day but that's about all. Maybe the old text-only posts have become vieux jeu, but then my French is rubbish, so I'm probably wrong.

Intricate web

2005-03-05T02:20:00.000-08:00

So, the farshah post (3 March) on my blog drew some comment - that was interesting, but consider my surprise when the image went 'straight to number one' with 29 hits on my Flickr! That's probably the way I tagged it (Lady Sovereign's pretty popular, too!). Reflecting on this made me do a double-take. I've been trying to keep the focus on the blog and the blogging itself, but when you actually pick it up for inspection, you find it's interlaced with so many other experiences, interactions and media. An intricate web of technologies. So Ruth sent me the photo-message of her tattoo. I emailed her to check out if it was OK to post it. She got back saying that was 'cool'. I uploaded the image on to Flickr and then the rest is history (of course, in doing this I superimposed my own reading, but that's not really the point). I'm thinking of the intricate web of mobile phone; email; Flickr; Blogger and ensuing comment. But even that doesn't quite capture it - it's too linear, because as I'm rather slowly and perhaps a little reluctantly discovering Flickr is a dynamic world in itself. Through tagging that image becomes part of the affinity-based folksonomy of the Flickr social world. Is Flickr in the study? I'm not sure any more. Well, I only have a handful of photos there and I've rather belatedly added TT and DrJ as contacts - I'm not sure I have the energy to engage with a new social network, but at the same time feel a bit awkward standing there, with only a couple of friends and this picture-sharing party going on all around me! I didn't initially see my blog as a visual space at all - I was persuaded because it looked drab against others I was visiting, and, on a more theory-driven note, I was aware of the need to explore the affordances. At the moment it seems that the autoethnographic focus remains in tact, but the borderlands are rich and interesting and must not be neglected.

Guilt

2005-03-02T00:59:00.000-08:00

I should be working but I'm blogging. Why's that? Must be more fun I guess. I've just been cruising around checking everyone's recent postings, reading comments, checking my Flickr (Oh! someone else likes Marcel!). There's two things here. One is that the workspace is the same, so its dead easy just to rattle off a few emails and then - in that liminal space between tasks - pull down the bookmark and you're in. And of course, one's own blog is a portal, a rabbit hole to an intertextual wonderland and then you're gone, time has slipped, you're in flow, lost in third space, safe in your own heterotopia. This is loaded with references to a shared discourse! The other, the second, is the sense that it's more fun, less constrained, open-ended, even creative...and playfully interactive (see italicised text above). You're hanging out with your friends, they make you laugh, you're curious about what they blogged, they make you think, they nourish the blogger within.

So my guilt, here, is that this escape to Blogland is about avoiding what needs doing. It's blogging as skiving, slacking off, loosing it. What will become of me? I'll be a blog-junkie a hopelessly addicted cyberflaneur. OR....I'll somehow be lost to my online identities, as the dracula cyberworld takes me over. I'm reminded of Borges, who writes about being taken over in the following.

...news of Borges reaches me by mail, or I see his name on a list of academics or in some biographical dictionary. My tastes run to hourglasses, maps, eighteenth century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson; Borges shares those preferences, but in a vain sort of way that turns them into the accoutrements of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that our relationship is hostile - I live, I allow myself to live, so that Borges can spin out his literature......Little by little, I have been turning everything over to him...

Borges and I (from The Maker, 1960)

On becoming history

2005-03-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

Confession: I often wake up thinking about my blog! It can really take hold when I'm in the shower. It's almost like blogthoughts have invaded the water system and enter my brain via the showerhead! But I rarely blog these thoughts, mostly I'm a late afternoon/early evening blogger when I'm settling on some of the notable (ie blogable/blogworthy thoughts and things of the day). It's all charmingly transient though, because the posts quickly become history and, let's face it, who spends time reading archives? Maybe some people do (maybe we should check that out) - I don't unless there's a link. Who wants history when today's news is breaking? So when a blog's sleeping (like Colin and Michele's did) there's some disappointment, and when it wakes it can be quite a pleasant surprise. That's the nowness and the newness of blogs. I like reading ones that regularly update.

Do I ever read archives? Well, not very much at all. Maybe when I stumble on a new one, maybe then - but usually there's enough on a page to get the measure of it/them. OK, so that's a bit of history, but it's not a thorough-going trawl through the archives. I have a kind of B-list of blogs - one's I keep an eye on from tme to time with a view to maybe linking to them in the future, but again that's very much the case of checking them out every so often. The other day I started thinking about that dead stuff buried in my archives and thought how good it could be to categorise or reference it (some bloggers do this sort of thing). The only trouble is that that starts to superimpose themes, whereas there's something organic - no don't like that word- chancy even exciting about overlapping ideas. For example, I had a sort of layering of footsteps/tracks/weather/space and place going on last week. Didn't get many comments, so it was probably total crap, but it was just interesting and real how the ideas became a sort of collage.

That overlapping and juxtaposition of ideas is a sort of creative process (not wishing to make grand claims for my humble blog). The archives then become like sketches, workings-out, think-pieces maybe informing something 'larger' or maybe just dying away. So, in the end, I think most of it really is just history, although I mustn't forget that I do sometimes put in reminders and references to check out later. Like this, today's thoughts - part of a developing tapestry of ideas or just some stuff waiting on this page to become history?

Linearity

2005-02-27T01:27:00.000-08:00

Village mural
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

The tyranny of the positivist research paradigm sometimes makes you doubt the wisdom of your own actions. In drafting up a proposal for this work, you're suddenly faced with a section called results. Well, it's funny that, because here the results seem to be apparent from day one. In a sense the results are just the daily labour of reflection! Or are they? Should there be some sense of progress, some sifting or settling of ideas. Probably. Traditional ethnographies are quite linear...extensive data collection, thick description, analysis, draft, product etc. Here, the linearity is superimposed by the research culture we're working in, but the study itself seems to flow differently, even at times to be recursive and, in a sense, some of the data was published before we began (!). So, I'm pondering on linearity and what that means for research, and also how that must force us to premature closure. Premature closure would hold the danger of making temporary thoughts somehow final. Well, I suppose you've got to stop somewhere, but maybe it would be more of a breaking off, meanwhile the blogging life continues to mutate (or something like that).

Bloggers

2005-02-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

One of the by-products of this autoethnography thing is that you become a bit focused on your own practice and intent. The blogosphere is full of interesting (and not so interesting) things. Where is Blogtrax on this continuum, I wonder? These thoughts were sparked off by my daughter who sent me this blog, which I guess resonates with something in her experience. It catalogues the problems of sharing a living space - but before you go there, remember to check the number of comments. I Hate My Flatmate is obviously a winner - a pretty impressive affinity space I'd say!

Not bloggers

2005-02-20T11:26:00.000-08:00

Continuing on the theme of approaching blogging by looking at not-blogging, some thoughts on not-bloggers - those who don't blog (and this is completely anecdotal). Well, here's a list:
1. Those who've never heard of it, thought you just made the word up etc. (There's plenty of these.)
2. Those who've read about blogs, usually in print, but think it's a geeky kind of thing, or a bit of a joke.
3. Those who know what blogs are...maybe they've visited...but feel it's 'all a bit technical for them'. ('I wouldn't be able to'; 'Would leave a comment if I knew how to' etc)
4. Those who know what blogs are, sometimes read them, but don't see the point of blogging themselves. (Don't see themselves as bloggers.)
5. Those who quite like the idea, are too busy, or just never seem to get round to it.
These could all be informed by orientations to digital culture. 1-3 seem to be on the periphery, whereas 4, 5 and , of course, bloggers themselves, are engaged to a greater or lesser extent. To varying degrees, not-bloggers don't see the point...and for bloggers the point is...?
Various. Increasingly I'm seeing it in terms of voice/performance, even creativity. To borrow from Sherry Turkle 'Who am we'?

blogging/not blogging

2005-02-18T01:29:00.000-08:00

It's interesting how some things get blogged and others don't; how some people blog and others just don't see the point. The not-blog concept explored... First, in the un-blogged universe, all those things in bloggers' daily online/offline lives that are not blog-worthy (for me that's things that get seen, done, read, visited that are not particularly interesting or thought-provoking); second, those things, places etc. that are too difficult to blog (no access, too dodgy, no camera); third, those ideas, concepts, and so on that are un-formed, messy and too difficult to express; fourth, those events, thoughts etc that are, in some way, seen as private. Well, of course, you could add to or change the list, but it seems to miss an over-arching blogger's decision - an editorial decision - how much to blog.

My original intent as a blogger was to lean into Third Space, to find expression for 'current pre-occupations' which didn't get voiced elsewhere (actually, I hoped at the point to remain anonymous, so it seemed more a matter of 'getting it off my chest' rather than being read by X or Y). But this meant surrendering to the form - keeping it fairly brief, coherent, readable and, yes, interesting - just in case someone important to me read it! Yet even then there was a boundary, a blog/not blog boundary.

An example: in the blogs I visit, there is little reference to the minutiae of everyday life. Where we go, what we do is usually only referenced in an oblique way. Here's an enigmatic reference, a more explicit reference and an implied reference to places we went/ things we did in meatspace. Clearly, there's so much silence, unblogged, not-blog stuff (and why not?). But it seems important to ask why some things 'get in' and others don't. The concepts of audience and purpose could be helpful here. My intial intent (above) was quite purpose-driven - you could call this Third Space thinking/writing; but audience known/unknown has gradually become important too. Will I say something interesting, (clever!), entertain...will my readers like me...will they return?

There's probably not enough space to even begin to open up the other dimension of not-blog, that is those, and there are plenty of them, who don't blog or don't see the point (or don't know what a blog is). It might be worth some exploration, though. If we are to understand what it's like to be a blogger, what this particular engagement with digital culture is like, feels like, and becomes then it must be set against the backcloth of not-blogging. What does it do that is different? What's the attraction? What's the point? (Or, alternatively, are they the wrong questions to be asking in the first place?)

Obsessions

2005-02-17T03:07:00.000-08:00

I wonder why I am so locked into thinking about places? And images?
I think it is because a whole new vista has been opened up to literacy academics, because of the increased number of possiblilities for multimodal texts. This means we have had to wander even more into other disciplines.
But we are still looking at literacy. We may use Social geography, we may use visual and cultural studies, but we are still coming at things from a literacy perspective.
That's all.

Learning and the Blogger's Eye

2005-02-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

OK so I have not written here for a while but I have been thinking thinking thinking.

I am learning stuff that is about the meta business of blogging, but I am also learning lots of things as a blogger. That is, I am learning about the process of blogging at the same time as learning to be a blogger.

Here are some of the things I have learned:

1. I have started to develop technical web-based skills...
Such as using a Flickr account to store and organise pictures. Thus, in having a blog, I have also developed a need to use an additional space on the Internet and this in turn means I have to acquire new skills in order to use it well.
I know how to

upload photos;
put them on a blog;
make them available publicly;
or privately;
organise my photos in sets ;
label photos with catchy tags.

(Tags are listed on Google and so my photos are more likely to be visited by others when they are surfing.It is a skill to pick tags which are likely to attract others - e.g. place names; brand names; things that bloggers seem interested in (e.g. graffitti).)

I have quickly become excited by the idea of people seeing and commenting on photos I post.It is clear, btw, that Flickr understands the mentality of people who blog; they are supporting the obsession of leading people to your work via tags etc.

I have been very careful to label as 'private' any photos of people who have not agreed to be on my blog. This stops people being able to see the photos by just surfing - they need a password. So I am learning a bit about the complexity of ethics and also about finding an audience for my work.

2. I have learned little bits of HTML - especially when I wanted to make my site PINK.

3. I am developing a new way of writing. I am learning to structure small pieces of text. I tend to link back to ongoing themes across posts (e.g. text as place in January; Parkour / Pourquoi again n January through to Feb.) or there are even jokes across blogs . I m learning to use a range of multimodal ways of communicating.

4. Commenters are very important to the substantive feel of my blog . I reply often to comments.

5. In addition to comments on my blog I sometimes have e mail correspondance with readers of posts. This is backstage talk which highlights something about the public nature of the blog.

6. Yet there is also an intimate feel to the blog. I have a sense of who is reading now and the way in which my affinity space is developing, means I have a slightly more secure sense of voice. But this still feels precarious and flexible. I want my blog to work and feel anxious about it.

7. There are some blogs (Trois Tetes; Vedana; a lesser extent e-selves) which definitely are weaving themselves together and are working as a unit. The fact that the frst two of these are people who meet in meat space lends the whole thing an extra dimension. Why are they blogging at each other? People are reading each others blogs, responding and keeping in step. This linkage seems very important to the bloggers involved. And it has been very exciting that Anya and I are emailing each other (see 5 below.)

8. I have elaborate jokes which depend on knowledge of previous posts or require newcomers to read previous posts which I will link to in order to help.

9. When writing a post I feel like a journalist, sorting through evidence in cyberspace - sometimes looking for substantiating evidence or proof; sometimes for inspiration. But in terms of reporting on stuff from meatspace, I definitely go about my daily life looking for things to blog. I look at the world with a blogger's eye - and that is the bit I find hard - bringing meat space in. It feels awkward, odd. It feels more authentic somehow to depend on the web.

10. I sometimes do not feel pleased with my post. I sometimes revise the clarity of my English. I sometimes do not know what to write but feel driven by the discipline of posting daily and this is an interesting thing that I have set this discipline. It is important to get things to sound right, to have a balance. To be economical with language - to make sure it is a proper piece of web text. It HAS to be multimodal to justify itself.

11. I feel I have to defend the activity. Frequently people say to me, (in meat space, and after I have explained to tem what a blog is) 'How do you have the time to do THAT?' and even 'Lucky you, I would not have time to do that.' This often feels like a value laden judgement of how I spend my time and I feel that people disapprove of this activity. I can justify it on two levels, one that it is part of my research, but secondly that it is about sharpening my mind and developing skills. However it gives me an insight into how young people feel, when they are attacked for spending a lot of time on the Internet. They must know they are learning a lot, but it is thoroughly devalued. Learning IS timeconsuming, but that does not mean one should not do it.

BLOG ON CHAPS!!!

Consuming blogs

2005-02-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

This immersion in blog culture involves reading web stuff too. Production and consumption are intertwined. I've been reading onscreen for a number of years now, but lately my habits have been changing. For example, I have the list of blogs I read most often on my links. I'm checking these everyday (even if they're slow or quiet). I also have some bookmarked blogs (and other sites) and look at these in a more casual way. I like linking through people's blogs into other areas too. Sometimes I follow quite techie ones and get lost trying to get my head round feed-burning, why XML is good and so on. Then there's other stuff (tags, trackbacks, wikis) that I grasp but don't use. Of course, it's not all like that. Sometimes you stumble on very everyday material or weird stuff. It's a bit like being at a party...some people seem really interesting, some I think I like and others are just background noise. HA! new metaphor: blog as party, invite your friends, but be prepared for gatecrashers.

I am responded to, therefore I am

2005-02-02T05:32:00.000-08:00

In December I put this in a paper 'Identity is no longer so closely linked to place or territory, delineated by nationhood, nor simply as psychology suggests, through acts of identification, but instead produced through action and performance.' It was a way of supporting the concept of 'identity performance'. I didn't have the space to go on and discuss how performance implies audience...and audience, in turn, suggests interaction and response. Reflecting again on this makes me think about the complexity of silent readers and regular commmentators on blogs. On the blog, identity is 'produced and consumed in a form abstracted from actual presence' (although we may from time to time show our faces) BUT 'Mostly overlooked by users, the production of the message is only the first part of the process: whether by a reply message or by tracking a virtual footprint of a visitor one's website, one can only know if one has been acknowledged through some sort of response.' Markham 2004:2. Now I don't track footprints, don't get many blog comments (although I know in other ways what my audience thinks) yet somehow, the other day, I formed the impression that my blog was drab, in need of a makeover, loosing energy. I wonder why?

Porous

2005-01-27T13:12:00.000-08:00

The blog is porous. It's like an organism. It lives, it changes, it grows. It takes nutrition from wider online/offline social worlds. Then it digests and transforms, releasing energy into new textual material, new links and interactions. It extends its tentacles, grows new ones, feeding off and feeding into relationships, knowledge systems, information, commodities. If it lives it can also get sick, tired, sleep or even die off altogether - be deleted, erased finally and forever - lost to the blogosphere. Gone blank.

Writing a new post

2005-01-23T11:57:00.000-08:00

is not to produce one new text, as in when you write on a word processor. Instead of producing a self contained text, you are adding a new patch to a huge patchwork. The links to other texts are not just journeys out but actually constitute the fabric of the post. So we are producing one huge, collaboratively written text. We are writing together and with an awareness of each other.
We also make it easy for others to join in, by referring back to previous posts and blogs we know (I think these links are anaphoric references for the Internet.)
Maybe that is why affinity spaces are so important to all members; we know we are all weaving the same fabric.
Hence, I was so shocked when this afternoon I saw that Guy had inadvertently linked to a post which had the most offensive pictures I have EVER seen. It felt like I was being insulted. It spolit my space.Guy have you seen it? I want to know what you think.

Blogs and writing journals

2005-01-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

Lynda and Caroline
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

Here's Lynda Graham (right) talking to Caroline at the Hidden Literacies conference. Whilst I was listening to Lynda I was making mental hyperlinks to blogs I read. What's interesting is that the kids she studies have made journals into a 'personal space for writing'...yet their friends and affinity groups are important for maintaining their interest. Also they develop themes...they have dead periods...they borrow ideas. OK, so blogging is a very different thing but it's a close relative as a writing practice. I was sitting there thinking 'Yeah, I know how those kids feel.' Finally there's a real sense of ownership. I LOVE MY BLOG! Truly, and I think I recall Joolz saying the same. I'm proud of it, it lives, I like it changing, updating and so on. It lives! I don't ever think of it as a chore. I feel differently about this one (not quite the same sense of ownership/purpose), but the work is good, nevertheless. The style is different, it's more reflective really and I suppose there's an idea that it's supposed to BE something. But I like it because it really is trying to do something new - to be research on its feet, working rebelliously outside the norms and stiffling discourses of straight-up-and-down academic writing.

its a strange thing

2005-01-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

But so many people who I know in meatspace are the most regular readers of my blog.
In some way I feel like it is cheating; I feel like I should only know them from cyberspace. And that my life should be a mystery and they should be wondering if I am who I say I am.

I know that people do take on new identities on the web, but I tell only things that are true ... OK so I have backdated my blog twice, but that does not count ... I think that for me, the point would be lost if I were not truthful on my blog. This may be because I wanted it to relate to my research; so I was in an earnest state of mind about it in the first place.
And another thing. Why do people I see often in meat space read my blog?
I think I know why.
One thing is, that I have asked members of my family to read it. Partly as a way of showing them a glimpse of my research which I don't really say much about in detail in case they think its stupid. By saying, have you seen my blog? I am giving the chance to think my research is stupid without seeing their reaction.

I certainly would not talk the stuff I out on my blog; or in this way to people. It is actually a bit too self centred to put in a conversation. But too informal for a seminar or academic paper; it is unformed stuff. I give one sided views, I give no space for interruption. I can just blab on. It would be rude to, on a daily basis, barge out with stuff that I happen to want to talk about.

And so it is a different angle on me. They see a me that would not talk this stuff.
But also I spose they might feel they are seeing in to the real me. And also they can skim read it,or only read the first part and then click me out.

I love peole to comment though; so I do want feedback..

I have copied Guy on my emails and started writing "are you up to date on my blog? go to: http:/// etc". And today one of the School of Ed secretaries said she had read it. I was a bit embarrassed and wondered what she thought. I don't normally talk to her about that sort of stuff ... I wondered if she thought I was batty.

I really do believe that heterotopia stuff about open and closed spaces and public/private sharing the same space.

The other thing, is that whole discipline thing of trying to write everyday. First the physical thing is sometmes hard, getting to the pc. Or maybe you are too busy and have to squeeze in time from nowhere.

But even if that goes OK, you have not got anything o talk about, so have to hunt around like a journalist.

So this blogging thing, is a very unique thing for me. And I really like what it is doing to me.

The thick folds of the social fabric

2005-01-19T07:30:00.000-08:00

Just come across Weblog Kitchen which seems like a useful resource to this project. I also found Mortensen and Walker's Blogonblog, but I'm not sure how regularly updated that is. And if you like the title to this post, that's because I was tempted back to deCerteau by a visitor to Dr Joolz. In 'The Capture of Speech' he writes about new technology (actually the tape recorder, and that dates it), but the point he make has relevance to blogging - or some blogs, at least. It runs like this: 'new technology [...] does not necessarily break all links with the past , but can help to reactivate the memory of everyday life and reconstitute the narrative of daily practices and anonymous itineraries hidden in the thick folds of the social fabric...' (p131). That makes me think of all those day-in-the-life type weblogs that are just about people doing ordinary stuff - like this one really.

Now I feel I need

2005-01-17T13:25:00.000-08:00

I feel I need the visuals too on my blog. Sunday 23rd I just blogged the same old cryptic, elliptical crap but then I felt I needed something to brighten my page, so I took a really dull picture of the Forge city-living site! That was strange 'cos today I really wanted the RFID thing. Anyway, that now puts me well in this methodological murk. As soon as you look at something as a material scientist/social scientist or whatever, it changes. I know that. But living it is different. That autoeth is strong medicine! The first scrape of the archaeologist's trowell leaves a mark in time, and that too becomes the archaeology...I look closely and everything changes. Is there a desire to return to more innocent blogging? I sense there's no return. In 'Being John Malkovitch' there's that bit where there's a puppet-puppeteer -it's a bit like that- I guess this is the heat of self-reflection.

Academic celebrity big brother

2005-01-15T05:29:00.000-08:00

Is that what we have been trying to be in all the time?
Are we doing our own big brother?
Do we tell people all the things we want them to know we have been thinking about?
Are we living some kind of pseudo academic, pseudo life on line?
Is my blog an online Academic big broother? Am I trying to be a celebrity?

I am serious.

I am still really enjoying the DrJoolz thing and love that you love my visuals Guy. I love the comments - especially seeing people who I don't really know appear on my site - even if I only see them via the droppings left on my meter. I get a real buzz.

Today I did a thing with some of the images I have collected over the last few years and wondered if they would make an article actually ... the writing was realy helping me to think things through.... although it is still in very embryonic form . So the blog also has this function which helps me in my work - which is of course mangled up with, entrenched in, embeded in, my life generally.

The thing we as teachers have done for years is talked about the importance of audience for kids' writing. And at last I am really finding out what that means. So that is really a great thing, to write and have responses.

But I am also utterly convinced that the notion of space is really important to think about. I ove going to my blog and I love being here. Although I increasingly feel the absence of Colin and Michele who I thought would be playmates ... I find myself continually checking and feeling sad that they are stuck on 22nd December.

And as a reader, it is a different sensation, going on line, to say seeing those autobiographical shorts on Channel 4 for example. There you see snippets of people's lives, often thematic, often including extracts from other bits of film ...

The interactivity of online is really important, but more meaningful and less confined than interacting with a Sky remote control.

Writing your links

2005-01-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

You read blogs and sometimes they're riddled with links - like a Swiss cheese. Today, on mine, I got pretty linky. Mostly I think I build around the links, assuming readers will take a fairly linear reading path (ref Kress) but that's not what I do when I read other blogs. I think I choose the link that looks most interesting, or maybe hover over a link to check the URL. Photoblogs and the more visual variety seem to me to be much more on the screen in an immediate way, almost as if they work on a different logic. Linky blogs reach out, string together or even juxtapose stuff on other sites. That's not to say one's better than another - just different. In the same way you get the 'today I met up with my friends' style, again following a different logic. A colleague's daughter is going to Oz for a while and she's looking at setting up a photoblog that, presumably, charts her travels and keeps the family back home 'in the picture'.

Another day

2005-01-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

Logged on early. Spent most of my day doing email, on the phone and then writing on the laptop. Not so hot for blogging today, although I did really want to write my blog and blogtrax at the same time, but I don't think you can log in twice. (Does Big Blogger know? What does Big Blogger know?). I've been thinking, with some envy, about how Julia's blog is so visual. I loved those photographs (were they the Mississippi trip?); they went well on my screen and made me think those wordy snippets and stuff on mine are...well, other. At times of blog uncertainty I want to do a new thing. A bag blog appeals...it could be done. I read, I think on BoingBoing, about Satan's Laundramat and how there was a sort of idea of mapping space, walking, imaging. It was an Auster sort of thing. And unlike that or Snapshotz I have no real organising concept. I just want to reflect what's going on in my cyberhead (sometimes). Then again, I'm interested in how Snapshotz is big on fab visual stuff, but there's other stuff going on in the writing.
My daughter phoned last night and told me how cool she thought my Wisdomask posting was, which is funny 'cos when I showed some colleagues at work they looked horrified - as if they'd just discovered that they shared an office with a pervert! Feedback becomes an interesting theme in the blogging process. Apparently the majority of blogs survive without posted comments. I like the way Snapshotz gets lots of comments but I'm a bit ambivalent about the (few) comments I get on mine. Having said that, I really loved Kate's comment on my house. It was a really good thing to get. But it's wierd, it's very unusual to get a total stranger posting. OK so maybe they don't visit a lot, but a total stranger could....but then again, how many times have I posted on a total stranger's blog. None. But I've been to a lot.

Suffering from nerves

2005-01-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

The site meter makes me nervous. I don't like noticing that I visit Blogtrax repeatedly, neurotically, obsessively - so when I want scholar google (which I don't have bookmarked) I don't go to Blogtrax, where I know there's a link, instead I google 'scholargoogle' and then AAARGH! halfway down the page there is Blogtrax! OMG!!!! I'm in a hall of mirrors. It gets worse. My blog seems to be blurring with Blogtrax. On Saturday I blogged the same picture on both; today I posted on my blog something that referred to work on this blog. Blogtrax is infecting my blog like a virus. Soon I'll need therapy.
I take comfort in Annette Markham, she sounds so nice. But at the same time you get the sense that she's been to that same scary place. Reflecting on her own ethnography she says: 'Every action I made that influenced the project became a text that engaged and interacted with a multiplicity of other texts. In the process of organising and doing this study, I was taking part in the organisation of that which was to be the study....In the end, this is a study of a place I helped to create.' (p.18) ....and then as if that was not enough she has the brass neck to interupt herself. How cool is that? She is my new hero.

Flashing

2005-01-08T06:35:00.000-08:00

my house
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

This is where we live (upper left, painted blue) looking up the road towards Jackie's. Martin and Gabriella, Mr Mohammed etc live opposite. The road's a bit of a thoroughfare for cars and also pedestrians - office workers, smackheads, students, neighbours and punks walk past each day. Neighbours opposite and pedestrians can look in if they choose - they usually don't. There's no high hedge or anything. If I stood at an upstairs window dressed, let's say, one day as a pirate, the next as a nun, the next as an academic reading a book, would anyone notice? Probably not. But word might spread. I might choose to stand naked at my window. Would that be flashing or naturism? There's probably a legal case and I guess intent and audience are central. Of course, this is an everyday story of blogging - how does it feel?

A way of being?

2005-01-06T02:27:00.000-08:00

A preliminary reading of Markham's work suggests that she has 3 ways of looking at online engagement characterised as 'internet as a tool'; 'internet as a place' and 'internet as a way of being'. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. In the book she sees them as a continuum, but has since revised this notion. Fining this down to blogging...what is blogging...which is it? Which is it predominantly? I'm beginning to sense it as a way of being (just a bit scarry), but when you have blog dreams and starting thinking links then something different must be happening! I'm wondering whether blurring the online/offline binary, moving into 'lightweight' engagement (or is it pervasive/ubiquitous technology?) could be the new symptoms of this way of being. I wonder if this is shared in the AS or CoP?

Do I talk too much?

2005-01-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

Well probably, yes. Gender seems to appear in this and this - but, of course, it was there all along. There's another layer of the identity thing! Substratum. And then I thought, oh yes a tagboard - kind of geeky - opened it up with a heavy duty kind of comment. Then again the tongue-in-cheek bit - the irony about gadgets and toys. Blokes who blog...and I now wonder (rather belatedly) how, and in what ways blogging about my blogging will change my blogging. And if blogging changes how you think (as Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker argue) - what will become of me. I'd post a picture if I could find the right one to capture this idea!

just thought that

2005-01-05T06:58:00.000-08:00

While looking again at a Communities Of Practice web site that maybe we censor what we write (stuff about what we had for breakfast; tsunami, etc) because we want to keep to a kind of coherent identity that we are presenting; maybe we do this in order to signal clear membership to a group which we are defining for ourselves. This is likely to continually evolve.
Comments and feedback are useful in showing us which bits are important to others who we consider to be part of the group (or not as the case may be).
Sorry to harp on about Communities of Practice, apparently so woolly and baggy as a concept, but I find it useful.

melting pot

2005-01-03T02:42:00.000-08:00

I think that part of the blog role for me is to help me bring together lots of things I am interested in and to see how they connect with each other.
Also it is a way of not losing things; just recording web addresses, papers, thoughts, happenings.
I love the way I can use pictures which have become really important to me over recent years.

I also am forming a strong sense of audience; not just because of people I know who are reading this, but also because it is helping me to develop a sense of who I want to write for. I write more now since doing the blog and I am getting a sense of voice that is more my own; I hope it will help me improve my academic writing which I prefer to be more personal than 'stand offish'.

I sometimes write blog entries in advance - just so that each entry does not get clogged up with stuff. This means I am thinking a lot about audience and also about convention I think.
GUy, you were horriffied when you found Michelle and Colin had linked you. However I was absolutely overthemoon when I found out people were reading my things - albeit that I feel a bit shamed about this pleasure. (Middle class girls should not show off; should not be pleased with themselves, etc.)
There is a very weird private/public thing going on with blogs.

Process

2005-01-02T04:12:00.000-08:00

There's no single track to the blog, as far as I'm concerned. There seem to be a variety of ways in. At home I generally log on first thing. That's the result of a conscious decision to blur that online/offline binary; to experience more 'lightweight' use (Ito). Then, I might have a number of things going on during the day. If I'm writing, I'll keep a note of places I've been. I'll just paste on URLs - they're my footnotes/prints. Sometimes I'll blog them, sometimes they seem too heavy. At other times - say I'm not writing - just thinking, I might check some sites, keep a log the same way in a Word doc. The process is similar. Later, it's usually the evening, I'll post - usually a sort of cryptic trail around (some) of this stuff. Apart from that I might be a cyberflaneur, loafing around with attitude looking for stuff I like the 'cool hunter' (Gibson). And then a final approach might be close to blogger's block. I need to blog, but what? That's when I might cultivate a theme, like this strange foot-thing, then I'm actively looking for a thread, some links to forge. The Yeti blog was just like that. Oh, the foot thing...Bigfoot...Yeti...search. The rest is history. These are my main processes, but they often get blended, so it's not clear cut. Sometimes I'm dreaming up maybe the title, even a few words, when I'm out and about - that's a stage in the blog. I'm now wo/a/ndering about processes, then.

Performance

2005-01-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

Thinking again about my blog , I remember the way it says 'current pre-occupations in a variety of realms created by my multiple identities' underneath the title. That was there from the start. I had the idea that we can be engaged in performing multiple identities. Recently I wrote this:

Popular electronic communication provides plenty of opportunity for identity work, through multiple and complex interactions with familiar and unfamiliar audiences, and it is in this way that the idea of performing identity becomes salient – not least because acts of performance require an audience. Identity performance becomes important in digital communication when we wish to establish relationships with those whom we have little or no face-to-face contact with, particularly where words on screen are all we have to work with. This suggests a way of looking at identity as contingent, multiple and malleable, a move away from the fixed identities associated with industrial and pre-industrial society.

...and that was very much what I was thinking at the time. I'd been reading Paul Auster's 'New York Trilogy' which is all about nested identities. (Note: The Spectator refers to Auster as 'postmodern posterboy' - that's a typical put down from that elitist magazine!)

But now I'm getting interested in what gets blogged and what doesn't (the show/hide identities). My late December blogs make no reference to seasonal celebrations or family - who's interested?- but also nothing on the Blunkett resignation, the tsunami disaster or even the death of Susan Sontag. So do those thoughts belong to 'hide' identities? Or is it just a question of how I imagine/construct my audience? And, how does the fact that I've blogged some of this stuff here change that?

One version of history

2004-12-24T13:53:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking back over my blogging history. I think my blog has evolved - perhaps, it's changing all the time. My first postings (just over a year ago) were quite tentative. I didn't have any idea what I was trying to do. I learnt about blogging from Colin, and I was just trying out really. I tried to keep it quiet. I wasn't 'a blogger' - I was just testing the tools. I told one or two people, but this comment was quite honest:
To the best of my knowledge, only a few people have looked over this blogspot...and most of them are me or related, but probably more will (hi Cathy), so I thought a few more links would jolly things along..
Only later when I learnt that one or two people had my address did I start taking it a little more seriously. I remember showing someone Michele and Colin's blogspot and suddenly seeing a link mine on the sidebar. That was a bit emotional. I was a bit shocked. That was a transition point. I thought, if other people are really going to read this it better be worth it. I suppose I constructed an audience at that point. I started making a bit more of an effort - mentioned my blog to one or two people who I thought might be interested. Lately, I've been a lot more upfront about it. I've come out as a blogger - I'm really into it! And now this is a new phase, because I've made a transition now in terms of wanting to fully understand what blogging means...and this autoethnography is a tool.

Jumping in

2004-12-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

This feels quite strange already.
I began the DrJoolz blog as a research thing, where I wanted to see whether my assumptions about what it was like to blog, or to have a strong online presence was what I thought it would be.
I hd believed people to feel themselves as part of a group very quickly; I had thought that interactants would want to meet in meat space. Speaking for myself in my affinity space, I have had these suspicions confirmed.
What I did not realise was how obsessed I would become with being part of a group and I was not prepared for how strongly I would want to belong to that group.
I spend ages surfing now (even more than before) and have an obsession withb chasing tracks.
Is it work or is it play? I am beginning to think that I cannot separate work from non work as I become more and more enmeshed in the web.

In my other online research, I had noticed how often people's diaries, or logs, or homepages etc etc would provide evidence that people's off line lives were woven through with the values and activities which were professed in their web spaces.For example, the teen witch sites I looked at would have diaries, or photos of bedrooms which reflected strong indications of the embeddedness of Wiccan matters in their lives. It is as if the members of particular, themed, affinity spaces strengthened their membership to the group by authenticating themselves through glimpses of their meat space existances. They would show evidence of what they were readig, wearing and doing as forever woven through with the language and artefacts associated with Wiccan stuff. (Same goes for all the other 'themed spaces' I have observed. )

And I think I do this too, but I am realising also that through my blogging, certain themes in my log are genuinely the themes which weave through my thoughts all the time. Not sure of cause and effect here.

This morning I put a whole thing on my blog about a non pc web site my sister had sent me a link too. After writing about it I deleted the whole thing as it did not seem consistent with what I was doing. Also I thought that other bloggers in my space would probably not like it. (How can I tell who is reading it though?)

Guy told me he thought about something called 'show and hide' which fits all tihs editing stuff. We are presenting specific aspects of our identities of course.

Today I ran out of space on Flickr, my photo web site, so had to pay up to enlarge my storage space. This involved me paying through paypal. I forgot my password as I hve not used the account for a while (not been on e bay in a while) and so had to follow a complex chain of events to get a new password and then finally upload a silly picture of my notebook/bag.
Something there about identity, literacy practices and so on etc etc. (Prapsalso something about avoidance strategies - don't want to complete my RAE forms.)

Anything goes

2004-12-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

We are the research, the researched and the researchers, so I think the key is just to try to capture what's going on in order to make sense of the practice of blogging and the performance of identity in blogging. If anything blogtrax could be metablogging - a blog in which themes about the blogosphere arise, get tested, revised, changed and discarded. It could also be a place for records of discussions and links to readings or pattern-recognition in the work of others. As a sort of research credibility insurance exercise I'm going to look up a bit about autoethnography. At the moment I see this study as 'two interwoven autoethnographies of (academic?) bloggers' - although I'm not particularly keen to close down on that too quickly. BTW on a more mundane level, the blogtrax skin/ layout etc could be changed...does it need images?...feel free, I think at the moment anything goes!

Thanks and all systems nearly go

2004-12-22T06:53:00.000-08:00

This is great, all as planned so far, with user names etc as we discussed.
I think Typepad looks good but will need time to look up properly.

Am feeling uncertain already ... do you think we need to blog here everytime we blog something on out personal blogs?

And shall I write a few notes from our meeting on here too to set out some of the things we think might be themes? Maybe I could list some issues, some themes and some questions? These would not be to set down boundaries, but would be part of our record keeping.

As promised

2004-12-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

I've set this up having looked up Typepad (costs for more than one author); Movabletype (free trial and then you pay); Xanga (looks good but maybe not for us - my daughter's) and the new MSN (looks a bit naff). Let's get to work!