BLOGS!

I am so excited. I get to spend the week figuring out how to do blogs. This is said with no sarcasm whatsoever. I love blogs. Love to read them, love to write them, love to look at them. Just can't figure out the nuts and bolts of them. I have to my knowledge joined five new blogging services to comment on classmates blogs. I think I've commented on three. However, since I was uncertain, I used various aliases, alias? and now we'll never know who I am. Nor, unfortunately for my gpa will the professor. However this week all that will change for good.
Blogs are the perfect way to communicate in the world. They're bigger than facebook, more intrepid than email, and meant to be focused on specific arguments. Oh they feel so right! In the conversational world, they're the part of the conversation that is not at a cocktail party. This discussion is over coffee after a quiet dinner or at a coffee bar with a couple of acquaintances on a Sunday morning. Or hey, here, one the boards- musing together and working out issues or a thought to its logical end.
How do I think blogging will contribute to my learning in this class? How can it not? Blogs are like forums only more easy going. Blogs are where you develop a voice - it's bigger than the forum where you need to state things academically, smaller than a paper where you have to use so many words in exactly so much space and just right for taking that thought to it's next connected step.
My library director has a great blog. She's a pragmatic kind of writer, gets to the point, gets things done, and gets out of there. I like her blogs. There's another blogger in the system who works with all of the gadgets and she's a good blogger too - interesting and connected to the world. That's another good blogging habit I like - connecting others to interesting blogs. Some of my favorite bloggers so far though are in the class. They are people just like me, commenting on their lives and experiences in library school and libraries - putting theory to action so to speak. And their voices are interesting. There are no people there to get in the way of the message - it's just message, curious, thoughtful, funny, sturdy and interesting. I can hardly wait to learn more.
I've got all of the recommended bloggers set up on my google reader and I'll spend the week reading them.
Be honest, can you imagine a week getting to do exactly what you want to do? And getting credit for it?