July 24, 2008
Hey everyone.
Just trying out a few things over here at WordPress. I played with the idea of switching over a while back, and didn’t know if it would be worth the hassle. But since Blogger isn’t equipped with Trackback… that was the last straw. Now I have more options, which will probably mean more headaches. But I’m going to try this out and see if it’s worth it.
June 25, 2008
Scary. I certainly hope our recent lack of posting doesn’t portend something awful. But wait… does this count as a post about the blog itself?
June 18, 2008
The Panoptiblog has been on a little break. Partially because of the end of school, partially because of the floods, and partially because we’ve been lazy. Here’s what happened when we were away, that we might otherwise have commented upon:
A candidate was (finally) chosen.
A whole bunch of us Iowans got wet. (We were okay, overall.)
A longtime couple (and many others) got married.
A student of mine got made.
More rumors about Obama got started.
Hopefully, we’ll be back to some more regular posting…
May 1, 2008
So today, I let my high school students in on this blog. They’ve been looking through a series of blogs written by or about some of my namesakes. When one of them finally stumbled across the Panoptiblog, I said “Yup, that’s it.” I then linked it to my school blog, which I use for providing some online readings and media to students. Now, anybody who wants in is in.
Of course, this was one of the things I expected when I started blogging. If I knew one of my professors–whether it was one I liked or didn’t–was blogging, I’d at least go check it out. Some of that comes, I would think, from that weird feeling of seeing somebody who fits one role in your life out of context: when I run into one of my students in the grocery store with my kids, for example, or relaxing downtown, or wherever. It’s the same reason I friended a couple of former profs on Facebook, as well as a few former students. As a student, it’s nice to have the sense that your teachers are human beings, and if they’re involved in other creative or intellectual endeavors, curiosity seems reasonable.
I’ll write more about this later. In the meantime, welcome to our new readers.
February 21, 2008
I think I should mention that the title of this blog is meant to carry some connotation of Foucault’s discussion of panopticism in Discipline and Punish (we’re big fans), and give some suggestion that, with regard to topics, we might look in any direction we like. It was not meant to reference either this or this.
February 21, 2008
A couple of years ago I was on a plane reading New Literacies by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel. Among the literacy practices discussed was blogging. In the second chapter, the authors explained blogging, using Andrew Sullivan’s among their prime examples. They go on to explain the appeal of blogging thusly:
[B]logging is in tune with the tenor of the times. Blogs invoke the personal touch and put the character and temperament of the writer out front, rather than disguising it behind a facade of detached objectivity underwritten by the presumed editorial authority of the big formal newspaper or network (38).
I’d been reading Sullivan for a few years at that point, but mostly in his mainstream published work. Though I’d occasionally read it, his blog remained mostly a curiosity to me, and it wasn’t until after Lankshear and Knobel wrote about it, in the context of other modern literacy practices, that I felt pushed into learning more about it. I did, by reading Sullivan more often, then clicking on links, and reading those, and reading more, and I was soon hooked.
I’ll save any further self-indulgent recounting of my life reading blogs and sending the occasional note to their authors for another time. I have finally started one myself. It has been a long time coming.
As a novice blogger myself, I read a few words of advice before starting; apparently, you’re supposed to stick to one topic. I would find that difficult. I, and my fellow blogger who should be joining me soon, expect to blog about popular culture; education (we are teachers, teacher educators, and literacy researchers); literature; politics; and whatever else is on our minds. If this turns out to be a fatal mistake, then it will have turned out this blogging thing wasn’t for us after all.
Here goes.
