The Town Square

in my "Personal Poetry" blog.

Everyone have wonderful last days of Christmas and a Glorious Epiphany!

Carl Peter

I hope everyone had a Merry Xmas and all of you are ready for an awesome NYE!

Love from Melbourne, Australia. x

we are falling into rabbit house , blog is our house falling in there deep and deep .

We have at least one Blogit member - Jemmie211 - who lives in Hawai'i and is probably affected by the quake. Keep her in your thoughts and prayers (and it wouldn't hurt her pocketbook to click on some of her blogs to help her out financially right now, particularly if she has to pay for the repairing of earthquake-related damage).

This writer stays away from broadcast interviews.  I caught it at 8 p.m. on Ovation and it will be repeated at Midnight!  Ovation is Channel 110 on our TimeWarner digital box here in Ohio.  Check your local listings!  This is a one hour program.

A shameless bit of self-promotion? Perhaps. But I think these tips will prove to be useful for both new and experienced members of the Blogit community. Enjoy.

A Strategy for Getting the Most Out of Blogit:

http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/matthewsjournal/408825

Ten Tips for Making the Most of Your Experience Here:

http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/matthewsjournal/327649

And a vital Eleventh Tip:

http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/matthewsjournal/329401

I think Blogit should market itself more aggressively to the academic community.

Currently we use "Black board" to try to get students to engage in online dialogue about topics covered in the course. Predictably, students lose interest in Black board very quickly do the lack of comments on posts. The common student complaint is not that Black board is extra work, but that it yields little in the way of response.

If Blogit targets the academic community with ads in student newspapers and maybe even the Chronicle of Higher Education -- which would catch more well-heeled graduate students (although "well-heeled graduate student is an oxymoron) and faculty -- Blogit could increase its numbers and probably increase the number of comments on posts.

I'm guessing about the increase of comments because I think the lack of participation on Black board is due to the fact that it tied to specific course and students have the feeling of big brother looking over their shoulder and grading them on what they post. On Blogit students would be free to read, write and post according to their interests.

I think the strongest selling point with Blogit is that it creates a community of readers and writers -- no matter how small one's particular circle might be. One doesn't expect the whole Blogit community to interested in one's posts, afterall. Blogit manages, on however small a level, to link people with similar interests.

Further -- of value to me -- it encourages self-expression in writing.

Now, where are all these scatter thoughts that I have just written coming from? Last semester I sat in on a presentation by a faculty member who was attempting to anticipate the future of blogging. I mentioned Blogit and circulated samples of my posts to give him an idea of how this works. He said, about the concept of Blogit,"I have enough to read without paying for the privilege of doing it." Good point. So why do I continue to pay for Blogit?

Well, it goes back to that thing about the small network in the community who regularly comment on my posts. These are people I don't know and would not know were it not for Blogit. I also find that I generate ideas by commenting on other people's posts.

The selling point is the potential for a reading and commenting community to stimulate ideas. This, coupled with the accumulation of posts and comments over the years, which allows one to edit and re-write oneself in a way that may be helpful in one's career or education.

It seems to me that Blogit is -- or can be -- about generating writing over time; and this process of generating writing occurs as a result of the potential for feedback from a small community of readers who -- and the very least -- encourage one to keep writing even one doesn't always find their comments particularly helpful.

If you want my opinion -- although nobody's asked for it -- target those who read The Writer, Writer's Digest, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Nation, The New Republic, Salon, National Review, The Weekly Standard, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, etc.

Target the literate crowd and see what happens. Blogit can be an even more exciting place to try out ideas.

 

What does it mean to be featured on the home page?

 

Does anyone know??? Thanks...

George Norey had Pat Buchannan on last night-- the Coast to Coast late night radio show. The American flag was taken down from a post office and the Mexican raised. Do I make my point? Raise yourself from apathy--get involved.  This may be your last chance. 

The listener