In KCF’s recent comment, she raised some great questions about how blog writing may or may not contribute to your tenure file. Here’s a great place to start. It’s a youtube video that I first posted on my blogging and teaching workshop. The 9+ minute video includes discussions about public/private and blogging and tenure:
Here’s something else to think about in relation to KCF’s questions (I just tweeted about it on my trouble blog): Anthologize. It’s a new blog-to-book plugin. Check out what they say about it on their about page:
Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed also talks about it here. Could Anthologize enables blog-scholars to convert their blogs into valuable (as in tenure-file worthy) academic products? Or maybe they could help blog-scholars to disrupt and rework what should/does count as valuable work?
Thanks for re-posting this, I never watched this all the way when you posted it on Trouble, I like what they’re talking about. It would be great if we knew their thoughts on using blogs in the classroom as well – they focus here all on blog projects that they tend to speak about as personal project despite the fact that they are really blurring the personal/academic theorizing in the ways that they mention their blog feeds into other tenurable work.
I saw your tweets on Anthologize and this looks awesome! I see a possible “Its Diablogical” book on the horizon, or La Kitchen Chicana stories and recipe book?! OMG, that thing sounds AWESOME! Could I put pictures in it? Seems like a yes, that would be so sweet!
I like the idea of an “It’s Diablogical!” book–maybe this one could be more of a how-to manual (or at least include a lot of sections on practical exercises, tips, etc)? A La Kitchen Chicana book would be great too!
I agree that it would be nice if they talked about in relation to the classroom. At one point, I think the history prof (can’t remember her name?) mentioned that the blog helped to make her ideas accessible and engaging to audiences and then she said that that was something she needed to work on in order to grab her audience everyday–I’m assuming she was talking about her students?
Oh see, I read (heard?) that completely differently especially when she said that CNN and Fox News linked to her blog, to me, that insinuated that students weren’t necessarily her audience for some reason. Maybe I’m totally off in that interpretation though.
Oh yeah, I remember that now. I listened to it pretty quickly (and with RJP singing in the background). I think that your interpretation of that line is right. Maybe we need to make our own video podcast that speaks to the absence of any discussion about feminist teaching and the important ways it is fundamentally connected to our research….Oh wait–I think that there is a longer version of this video panel online–I will try to find it. Maybe they talk about teaching in some other part…
Okay, here’s a link to the entire video. I haven’t watched any of it yet, but maybe they say more about teaching. It’s much longer than the highlights that I posted from youtube:
A Blog of Her Own