BlogHer: Just Clone Me!

It was the first breakout session of the day, and already I wanted to be in three places at once. Clone me! (I'm a Gemini...it's not that big a a stretch.)

BlogHer '05, held July 30 in Santa Clara, Calif., was envisioned as "a network for women bloggers to draw on for exposure, education, and community." Lots of women (and some men), lots of ideas and energy, lots of options.

So, which "Birds of a Feather" interest group should I pick? The Citizen Journalism group, the "What's Wrong with Traditional Media" group, or the Education group. What's it gonna be?

Since I'm planning to use my blog in support of my newswriting class at SJSU, I went with the Education group. I got to talk with Melissa Wall, a journalism prof at Cal State Northridge; Staci Wolfe, multimedia coordinator for the KU school of journalism; Ellen Spertus, who teaches computer science at Mills College (and who happens to be related to one of my colleagues, Grace Provenzano); a middle school teacher who blogs anonymously about teaching; a student teacher who, like me, is interested in using blogs in the classroom; and a couple of local high school students who can already blog circles around me. Much fun, many ideas.

Some good ideas I took away from this group:

• For students, blogging brings education into their territory...most of them are already on line.
  
• Use open posting on class-related blogs and ask students to proofread/copyedit each other's postings (as well as comment on topic/content)
• Ask journalism students to use an online style guide (as well as AP style) for their blog postings (I may send my students to KU's online style guide)

Much food for thought...more BlogHer notes to come.