The way I feel about blogging...

There are many things I feel about blogging; positive feelings don't generally fall into that category.

I'll admit that I have a personal bias. And in the past have had extremely negative experiences with online forums. But every time a teacher has assigned a forum they became a torturous daily exercise, that I would never look forward to.

Okay I admit being able to put your work online is useful in a lot of different ways... sometimes. The argument for online blogging for classes is always something along the lines of

" You don't waste paper."
"It easier to share information with your classmates and the world!"
"It's fun."
"ETC."

We all know what were supposed to get from it, but do actually ever?
For me the answer is simply no.
People could blog their hearts out and half of the time your classmates who should be reading your post lose interest a quarter of the way down the page.
Most people have stopped reading by now or are thinking about stopping.

And its not because the majority is unmotivated, or unable to excel in a learning environment, or turn their assignments in on time, it's just being online seems to induce this behavior. It relates all the way back to one of the first articles we read in class, "Is Google Making Us Stupid" by Nicholas Carr. Our mind capacity to sit with something and concentrate on it for a long period of time has been completely diminished.

Because this blog is so physically unattached from class, it so easy to forget about. It's just another website that we will try and remember to look at, after going on facebook, twitter, myspace, livejournal, looking at the weather for the next week, checking the new york times website, reading your horoscopes from three different websites, watching at least 25 pointless videos on you tube, while vid chatting with your two best friends, down loading the hit song of the day, listening to the hit song of the day, going back on facebook to look at pictures of your x-best friend's boyfriend's sister's birthday party, tweet about your boredom, facebook stalk more people, glance over your email, Then you start stumbling, and once you start stumbling you never stop. You stumble from website to website until you find something interesting to share with your friends. Go back on facebook to post on their wall, tweet again about something funny you found, and repeat.

I realize that freedom of speech is a right every single person has. But sometimes on forums or blogs people take it one step to far. Even in an academic situation there is always one person who is irresponsible with their words, creating confrontational situations that are completely virtual. These attacks can either be indirect or direct. It is going back to Derrida's fear of writing, he fears peoples reactions. People on blogs though seem to use the computer as a mask. They can say what they want no matter how offensive or malicious and be fine with it because they are not being physically confronted.

I am not saying I think the internet is stupid or blogging is a bad thing.
I actually think blogging to about your own personal opinions, or writing about your passions is really awesome. I personally enjoy reading some of these blogs.

As for Blogs and forums in a classroom setting, for me, definitely has more cons than pros.
Blogs in the classroom, is like the idea of a democratic communist nation. Only in theory does it work the way it should. But due to human nature, when it is put into action immediately the chance of equality, balance, and order that government should provide is lost.