Scholarly Life of a Committed Technofile

As if I didn’t already have enough to do (snort!), this academic year I am participating in MCC’s new Faculty & Professional Learning Communities (FPLC—pronounced fip-lick). Now yes, of course no time (dissertation, what dissertation); however, I feel it is important to demo and contribute to building an environment of scholarship on our campus. So…I’m participating in the one technology focused one, podcasting!

Anyhow…all that to say I just finished reading the intro/chapter 1, podcasting chater, and conclusion/final chapter of Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (his emphasis). In the first chapter he spends some time discussing how these web2.0, or as he calls them read/write web tools, are radically changing how journalism and politics is being done. This makes me think of one of my political science colleagues, Brian Dille. Brian repeatedly emphasizes the need for us to motivate our students to become more civically engaged. I like this idea of contributing to our students’ ability to actively participate in civic discourse by teaching them how to use powerful communicative web2.0 tools. I’ve started writing “what/why” blurbs for my students. For example, I have them all get social bookmarking accounts. Most of the time they have no idea what these tools are…so the “what/why?” blurb helps to clue them in. I haven’t yet constructed a “what/why” for either blogs or RSS. I think this civic duty angle is going to work smashingly!

So don’t I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, my teaching blogging, social bookmarking/networking, and RSS aggregators tools is a civic act!