Chasing the Dragon's Tale

A Visual Sociology class from Belmont University, lead by Dr. Andi Stepnick left Nashville right after Christmas to spend several days touring and studying in India. As part of that experience the group is blogging: Visual Sociology in India.

I have been on several overseas trips and strongly support the spontaneity and personal reflection that a blog can provide. Numerous comments from those blogs seems to indicate that family and friends benefit from the embedded-journalist-type reports from non-US soils. As a promotional tool, the unpolished nature of many blog posts gives a unique insider's view of what life is like as a study abroad student. There are challenges involved to make this happen, however. The three biggest challenges are (generally):

1. finding a (convenient) high speed internet connection
2. carving out time from hectic travel days to sit down and compose a post
3. manipulating/optimizing/uploading images to include with a post

Chris, one of the students currently in India, raises some interesting questions about capturing the experiences during these trips and how the focus on capturing can get in the way of actually experiencing all that a country has to offer. He is right...and finding that balance brings me to some thoughts on how to support students on these adventures.

Continue reading "Blog 'Life Line' for Study Abroad Classes" »

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Whew! In the name of keeping Belmont University blogs open for freely exchanged ideas/discussion, we accumulated roughly 20,000 spam comments and trackbacks... mostly on blogs that are what I shall politely call dormant. Today was the day for housekeeping...*bleh*.

Life-cycle of a blog
Allow me to walk around this dormant blog concept for a moment. Most of the time, the demand for a new blog here at the university comes with a level of urgency (plus an occasional name-dropping of some dean-level-or-above individual). Blog construction generally follows very shortly along with a round or two of blog basic training sessions. The first posts follow within a week or so... and then the pace tapers off to oblivion within 6 weeks. The questions follow shortly thereafter, "Why isn't anyone reading my blog?", "Can we do a launch so that we'll get more traffic?", "Why aren't my posts showing up in XYZ's aggregator?" And then, finally...dormancy and abandonment (insert bugler playing taps here)...'yet another blog statistic.

Continue reading "Blog Maintenance Rant Time or..."Fruitflies live longer than most blogs"" »

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Belmont University owes much to the father-of-Belmont-blogs, Bill Hobbs. Bill introduced the medium here and launched the core set of blogs that has now grown to a count of 30+...that includes one of the nation's most successful business blogs, The Entrepreneurial Mind. Bill is off herding elephants (or something *grin*) and I wish him the best. His legacy remains.

This morning, early, The Entrepreneurial Mind received a face lift to match the corporate branding look of the university's web presence and a code clean-up to bring it closer to W3C standards. Even during the process, there were 4+ visitors from the opposite side of the globe, the first of some 600+ visitors expected to read Dr. Cornwall's blog today. Within the next few months, Dr. Cornwall will pass a milestone of over half a million visitors...quite the tribute to his dedication and persistence!

Stepping Onto Soapbox:
It is easy to get excited about the volume of traffic that a blog can generate. We are quite guilty of that here on campus. Over the last couple of years, several Belmont University hosted blogs have been created only to be abandoned after a few months. What many blogger-wanna-be's fail to understand is the level of passion and commitment it takes to write consistently (daily) with information that includes interesting commentary and source attribution. Even that is no guarantee that the masses will flock to a blog. Great bloggers tend to be active and engaged in a larger sphere...a community of bloggers who interact with one another. If one expects other readers (and bloggers) to visit and comment on a blog, then take the initiative to comment regularly on blogs of interest as well. ---Off Soapbox

I lift my early morning coffee mug to those who get it and are willing to make blogs the great tools they can be (I'm stopping now, this is starting to sound like an army recruiting commercial).

Posted by admin at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)