Blogs: Happy 10th Anniversary!

The Wall Street Journal published a story this weekend about how blogging just turned 10 years old. A rather good read, it talks about Jorn Barger starting the first blog in 1997.

“He began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis,” and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word “weblog.”

The Online Amplification Effect: Why Colleges aren’t paying attention

This article by Margaret Soltanin (professor of English at George Washington University) writes in the online Association of American Colleges and Universities about how readers circulate emerging details and opinions through blogs and e-mail messages. She says “the amount of online attention and discourse the story attracts becomes the story.” She calls it the “amplification effect,” and most colleges are either unprepared for it or turn a blind eye to it.

She says professors dislike academic blogs and Web sites like RateMyProfessors.com, which the latter can be quite revealing, especially since “institutions are used to operating in secrecy”.

Wikipedia editing: Who’s behind it all?

This New York Times article looks at one particular Wiki editor: Matthew Gruen. In my classes I teach, I mention Wikipedia as a resource and make my learners aware that this type of Web presence does have validity as well as is an important part of the “New Learner”. However, putting a face to a contributor to Wikipedia, much less a name is extremely valuable, not to mention the fact that this is a young fellow who does editing and entries in his spare time! Oh, and he is only 16 years old.

From the article:

“Wikipedia, as nearly everyone knows by now, is a six-year-old global online encyclopedia in 250 languages that can be added to or edited by anyone. (“Wiki,” a programming term long in use both as noun and adjective, derives from the Hawaiian word meaning “quick.”) Wikipedia’s goal is to make the sum of human knowledge available to everyone on the planet at no cost. Depending on your lights, it is either one of the noblest experiments of the Internet age or a nightmare embodiment of relativism and the withering of intellectual standards.”

More here…