Blogging
open university style

2010–04–22

The Open University allows students their own blog, what do people do with this opportunity?

The urge to communicate

Something most of us have, and if you’re an OU student you probably suffer from it more than most. And the OU provides us with a personal blog—what do people do with it? Fascinatingly lots.

I waste [spend] a fair amount of time checking out what other OU students think, write, feel, do web-wise. So I thought that I might provide those of you who don’t share my interests with some field notes. [If you aren’t interested why are you here?]

first off…

A moan—if you’re going to [OU] blog then create a profile. I’m tired of clicking through to someone’s profile only to find that there isn’t one. If I find you interesting I want to know something about you and see all your blog posts at a gulp, please give me that option.

It’s not even something that you can get round—I tried hand-crafting a URI but that didn’t seem to work. But then again I’d had a couple of drinks so perhaps I didn’t do it right. The point is that I shouldn’t have to bother.

field notes

Some of the usual OU blog staples are there: TMA away/TMA back but there are some interesting variants:

  • Tutors blogging to their tutor group.
  • Tutor/course groups blogging to each other [rather rare].
  • Online diaries ranging from the mundane to the truly whacky. [I like the latter!]
  • There are a few faux blogs [like mine] that link to a ‘real’ blog.
  • There are a whole load of course-enforced H800 blogs in various styles—from philosophized course notes to “here’s my bloody blog post” stopping at all stations between.
  • Blogs that I don’t pretend to understand [and not because they’re in a foreign language, although I don’t understand those either]. Both what they mean and who they’re aimed at escapes me.

A rather more focused set of reasons than that found in the general o…sphere. But I think that’s to be expected, these are OU blogs—what did I expect? If you want to do do something else there are better places to do it. For example, if you want to share your photos Flickr, or whatnot, is obviously a better place to be. The platform is what it is—a place for OU students and tutors.

I’m tempted to suggest that this is for proto-bloggers before they move onto a ‘proper’ blogging platform. Tempted perhaps but I’m not being drawn into that error.

There’s a tendency for those of us who know a bit about the web to know what it’s for and how it should be done. The web isn’t for anything except what its users and makers want it to be for and how you do it is up to you. People are free, that’s all to the good.

h800

Am I comfortable with blogging being a course requirement? Why shouldn’t I be? There are a lot of these H800 blogs—a rough guess would be more than half of what’s there. there’s a potential for these to swamp other kinds of content.

My main problem [perhaps that’s a bit strong, concern might be a better word] with them is that they’re, what I might describe as, specialized. If half the blogs were JavaScript focused that would suit me, but it wouldn’t be for everyone—I’d feel that the JavaScript brigade should move elsewhere.

I’m falling into the error that I said that I wasn’t going to above—it isn’t for me to decide. I’d like lots of “what it feels like to be an OU student”, in which case write it yourself neil! The H800 stuff has it’s place.

taken all in all

It’s a great resource, worth using and definitely worth visiting. So…

some of my personal favourites

There were [so far] three blogs that stood out for me:

  • Clive H—funny and odd, doing English methinks, something poem-y? I love the Socrates stuff!
  • Nina D—green hair and odd pic.—I’m guessing arts course. But well written, whacky and funny.
  • Valentin F—I feel that I should get this one, there’s obviously maths with, I think, a hint of computer science. Something for me to aspire to then.