Why Blog?

Setting up and maintaining a blog requires a considerable commitment of time and energy. What reasons are there in support of investing one’s resources to such an enterprise (given all the other things in professional and personal life that need attention as well)? I spent several years occasionally visiting other people’s blogs, and then the past few months doing so much more regularly (through an RSS reader). Why not just continue to be a passive ingester of the thoughts and ideas of others? Why embark on the path of adding one’s own into the mix (beyond commenting on others’ blogs, without having one of one’s own)?

This question is about why teachers/scholars might want to spend the time to blog, rather than one focused on why blogs might be useful as part of coursework for students. Here I post some of my initial thoughts on the question, to be supplemented later as I get more blogging experience.

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Pedablogy–popular name

[Note from 2013: This blog used to be called “PhilosoPedaBlogy,” so that explains the following post.]

I just found several blogs with a title similar to mine: Pedablogy. So there are several of us out there playing around with (bad?) puns!
One blog called Pedablogy is subtitled “Musings on the art and craft of teaching (colored by my view of the world as an economist)”. I found especially interesting his discussions of “what is a college course,” and considering the relationships between class time and texts. I have myself been thinking I need to reflect on (and post) something about the following: what do I think students should be getting out of coming to the class meeting? It should be more than repeat of the text, obviously, but what goals do I want to set for class time? That will be considered in a future post….
Another Pedablogy blog is by Seaghan Moriarty in Galway, Ireland, and is subtitled “An eclectic collection of articles, links and remarks about the potential of ICT to enhance education.”
Finally, there is Pedablogue, a blog that defines “pedablogy” as entries in Pedablogue. The author of this blog is a Professor of English, but he is going on sabbatical (and so is his blog) until August 2007. I think the archives will remain in place, however.

About this blog

After doing numerous web searches for blogs on pedagogy relating specifically to philosophy courses (university level or otherwise) and coming up empty-handed, I decided to start my own. There apparently used to be a community blog devoted to teaching and learning in Philosophy, according to this list of philosophy blogs (see the “teaching philosophy” entry under “group weblogs” on this page). But it appears to no longer be up and running. The blog you are reading right now is owned and operated only by one person, Christina Hendricks at the University of British Columbia. I’d rather have a blog about teaching and learning in Philosophy be a community thing, since such topics are best discussed and reflected on through interaction with others (otherwise, all you’re going to get is my experiences and reflections. Anyone who is interested in collaborating can email me (see my UBC Philosophy dept. page for contact info).

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My summer of e-learning

I seem to have become obsessed with learning new technologies for teaching and learning in the past few months. Primarily through attendance at the 2006 UBC Learning Conference”, and through attending several seminars at the TAG Institute (TAG=The Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth at UBC, which conducts workshops and collects resources for the teaching staff at UBC), I have begun to learn about the following things…

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