Week 4 Reading Reflection

This week we read Chapter 8 of A new literacies sampler:Looking from the Inside Out: Academic Blogging as New Literacy by Julia Davies and Guy Merchant.

This chapter is mainly focused on exploring how and why blogging becomes one of the important forms of new literacy. What makes this paper special is the two authors, Davis and Merchant, are both "the subject and the object" of the research. They introduced the practice of blog from the "insider' point of view and the vivid examples from their blog screenshots helped me to understand some of the abstract concepts from this chapter.

What interested me most when reading is the authors discussed the three aspects of blogs: publishing the self, the nature and fabric of the text , social networks.

1. Publishing the self examined the identity issue when people start blog in a public domain. What to post? What not to post? What kind of impression we are trying to make to friends, family, colleagues and strangers when our blogs are open to everyone out there to read? To me identity and self-image is just as real and important online as it is in the physical world. I am basically a private person in daily basis. I don’t share intimate details of my personal life with just anyone. So I would not open to everyone online either. Actually I believe it is essential to set up boundary for our web existence. My blog here is basically a showcase for my graduate portfolio that I keep it professional and academic-appropriate. I have joined one Google Groups, where my identity is a world language teacher. I only discuss and share posts regarding teaching and learning experience on Google plus group. Most of my personal communication is kept through Wechat.

2.The nature and fabric of the text pointed out blogging is essentially a social practice, many web features(tags, hyperlinks and comments) has made it easy for visiter to check reference and leave comments, which made the blog become interactive and evolving.

3. Social networks looks at "how interactivity gives rise to the notion of blogging as a shared endeavor". It discussed in depth of "affinity group". When people start a blog, they expect to attract more like-minded people to join in the conversation and possibly develop social relationships with them.

With all of these things I read I have gained great deal of insight into the world of blogging. But to be honest, this chapter is by far the least my favorite required reading.I would like to give credit for Davies and Merchant to start the research on this topic ten years ago when blogging was just an emergent new trend. All the insights in the chapter must look fresh for the readers in 2006. Now in 2016, 10 years after the book is published, blogging has become a more settled practice in daily and academic field. Most of the insights in the book are not so rejuvenating any more for me.

Dont get me wrong, I do see how blogging can be a powerful tool in the classroom. Our students can put their thoughts and feelings out there, and learn about themselves and about others in a meaningful way. Blogging can be a powerful tool for world lanauge teaching. In the mean time, I am hoping we can read something more practical, such as how to make meme, create gif file, combining videos etc. where I have immediate use in my class.

#ILT5340DigitalStorytelling