I just finished listening to parts 1 and 2 of our visibility dialogue–it was really fun to hear our conversation (even though it was scary too–it can be hard to listen to yourself and hear how your ideas sometimes come out jumbled and awkward)! I think I see the power of podcasts. Last year, I often thought about doing a mini-lecture via podcast. Now that I know how easy and cool they are, I might have to try to use them in the fall. I think they might work particularly well in my large (60 student) class next spring.

Anyway, back to our dialogue/diablog on visibility. After listening to parts 1 and 2, I am very impressed with how articulate you are, KCF (and I think your voice sounds very wise)! Also, I came up with some key points for our formal section on visibility:

• Blogs enable us to make the writing/thinking/learning process more visible. I use my personal blogs to archive my own ideas and research. Course blogs can make the learning/writing process visible to current students in the course and to past and future students as well.

• Blogs also enable us to make our pedagogy and the course (its purpose, the assignments, key concepts/ideas) more visible. I would also add that blogs can enable students to see that teachers are thinkers, learners, and, in my case, goofy people who love The Brady Bunch.

• Blogs make visible a wide range of models (from the instructor, other students, other feminist blogs) for how to think critically, express our voices, produce alternative forms of knowledge, link ideas with our own experiences/stories. These models are not limited to traditional academic approaches (being abstract, not using I statements), but can include an ever-expanding list of creative and inspiring ways to think, reflect and connect.

• Blogs make the connections between ideas and between different worlds/spaces visible to students.

• Blogs enables us to express and connect multiply parts of our selves.

• Blogs make us visible and accountable for our ideas/words. While this makes us more vulnerable, it also opens us up to new ideas, new ways of being, new connections, etc. I think the idea of being vulnerable connects to being authentic (and/or generating authentic moments on the blog…maybe this idea is more suitable for our building community section)?

• Blogs make visible a wider, more diverse, range of voices and ideas–voices that extend beyond any one message or approach to learning,  engaging, thinking, or expressing ourselves.

• We need to make blogs (those we write in, those we read) more visible in order to demonstrate to a wide audience (especially those who dislike and/or dismiss blogging in the classroom) how helpful blogs can be in helping teachers to cultivate feminist classrooms.

That’s it for now. KCF, I imagine there will be some overlap between some of these ideas and our discussions of “creating community” and “engagement.”  Plus, I still have to listen to Visibility 3 and 4 and hear/read your thoughts on all of this. Wow, that’s a lot. We should have no problem writing 4 pages, right?