EdMedia blog panel

Adrian Miles jotted down his experience of the blog panel at EdMedia 2004 in Lugano. He concludes:

Key outcomes: a high level of interest in the possible use of blogs, confusion about how or why you would use them, questions and problems about how to encourage, foster and nurture their use with disinterested or resistant students, confusion and a difficulty in showing the distributed nature of blogging (something that I have to add to my presentation). It is clear that outside of Mortenson and Walker’s original essay on blogs the literature is surprisingly thin (outside of blogs) on a pedaogical ‘plan’ for the use of blogs that a novice blogger might use. The specific problem with this is that blogs are very much like design education – you have to learn by doing it.

I would have to say a lot about the last part, because I feel like the “learning by doing” principle takes on everywhere.

I was originally planning to join that panel, but I changed my mind. I really regret I could not make it to Lugano to meet those people, but as I explained to others in the panel via E-Mail before, as a contributing presenter to the conference, I was not willing to spent my free time on preparing a presentation, traveling at own expense and paying a high registration fee (exclusive events & prints). It’s arcane that there are places in the academic universe where this policy seems to go without saying.