Category Archives: Blogging

Like Leading a Horse to Water …

OK, I admit it. I was skeptical. I was nervous. I was, in fact, the typical Baylor University faculty member facing something new. And I was one of the four original members of Baylor’s first Academy of Teaching and Learning.

Oh, our captain — Dr. Gardner Campbell — assured us that by the end of the semester that we would be blogging and Twittering and whatevering as well as our students. And, more importantly, that we’d find it helpful both as a teaching tool and as a researching aid. But I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t so much skeptical as over-whelmed. I learn by narrative. I have trouble with a list. And, in the beginning, blogging was just that — a list. Do that. Do this. Do it twice.

I blogged. Tentatively at first. I messed up. It got fixed. I messed up again. I fixed it. Big step.

In time, Gardner was right. Blogging can be a valuable tool. No, really! I like it. I get it. And this is what I get:

1. Blogging connects you to a world of scholars (or just plain fans). Magazines are nice. But you’ll never make community with the readers of a monthly or quarterly magazine. Now I talk to other true believers. We share stuff. I learn about things in my field that I otherwise would have taken months to find. And blogging connections begat more blogging connections. You’re not alone. There are a world of black gospel enthusiasts out there. It becomes a community of like-minded scholars in ways that an annual conference or a quarterly journal can’t be.

2. It helps me keep important stuff that I don’t know is important at the time. I find a snippet of information. I blog about it and it’s saved forever. Maybe I never use it in my research. But maybe it is just the thing the blogger in Carjackistan is looking for. I helped.

3. It helps me try out new approaches. I think better when I write.  I’ve tried out some intros and some connections and some thoughts in my blog about both writing and teaching.  Once something is expressed and organized like this, I can learn from it.

4. Here is a quote from William Safire. Substitute “blogs” for “diaries:”  “Diaries remind us of details that would otherwise fade from memory and make less vivid our recollection. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, whose private journal is an invaluable source for Civil War historians, watched Abraham Lincoln die in a room across the street from Ford’s Theater and later jotted down a detail that puts the reader in the room: ‘The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed, which was not long enough for him…’ ”

5. It makes me closer to the students I teach. They think in blogs and FaceBook and Twitter and texting and other forms of communication now, like it or not. Blogging is my first foray in this Brave New Language.

6. It makes me a step closer to effectively working with my colleagues who still fear these new technologies. I’m able now to say, “No, this is not a waste of time. I know we write all of the time. But this is … different. And here is how it can help…”

Six things I’ve learned this semester. Six new things. That’s a good semester’s work. Thank you, Gardner and Heidi and Debra and Mona and the ATL.

In return, here are three things that I have figured out (with the help, again of William Safire) that I’d like to share back:

A. You own the blog. The blog doesn’t own you.

B. Write for yourself.

C. Put down what cannot be reconstructed.