full posts
I'm done!
I'm done. I don't feel any different from yesterday (except for a severe headache from the amount of alcohol I took), I don't know more than yesterday (probably even less, since alcohol destroys loads of brain cells), but today I'm no longer a student anymore. I'm now officially drs. E.R.Wijnia (MA in international circles). That looks nice.
So what should I do next? Anyone with a nice job opening??
[Update: I just read on the website of my university that for my education one recieves the title Master of Science and no longer Master of Arts.]
Blogs in the classroom
A few weeks ago I spoke to my father about blogging. Explaining what my conclusions are from my research I told him that blogs could be used for educational settings. As a maths teacher he was interested. The upcoming year will probably be the last one before his retirement, he only has half the hours than usual and therefore time on his hands, so I thought that running a little blogging experiment would be a nice way to end his carreer as a teacher.
The idea is that he will run a classblog, in which he posts maths exercises on a regular basis. The students will have to post their solution in the comments. I think it would be interesting to see what happens when students get clear insight in what their peers come up whith. When I look back at my own highschool period I never discussed the things I learned with my peers. Maybe this easy way of using a blog to share solutions publicly inspires students to discuss things more.
I suggested to my father that he ends this experiment writing a paper that could be published in a specialist journal for (math) teachers. But maybe I'll make it my experiment too, since I'm the social scientist and an expert on interviewing and blogs, and write a paper myself. Would this be a good idea?
Frequency of updating
A Penny For... (found via Corporate BloggingBlog)asks wheather there is a mimimum for blogging frequency. Personally I don't care. In my definition of weblogs in my thesis I got rid of the 'updated frequently' passage that is common in current definitions of blogs. If I look at my own behaviour compared to others I blog rather infrequently and not with a clear rythm. I don't blog everyday, some weeks I don't have the correct spirit to blog. OK, maybe that has lead to readers dropping of the radar, but that doesn't matter to me. I blog most of the time in a reflective manner and I'm not always in a reflective mood. I write for myself, I think through writing and blogging helps me find people that can join in my reflection. I certainly don't want to bother those people who do read my blog with meaningless posts just because I want to keep the frequency up. The question asked is irrelevant to me. Maybe people abandon their blogs, only because they feel the pressure of others that they constantly should produce text. Let people decide for themselves how often they want and are able to write.
Finishing up
I've nearly finished editing my thesis. What a relieve! I haven't been blogging much lately, but since most of the hard work is done now I've got more time on my hands and space in my head for blogging probably. However, the time has come to focus on writing the english paper for BlogTalks. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that and wheather I'm going to publish it piece by piece or only when it's completely finished. You'll see how it goes.
Reading minds??!!
Did Jan Schmidt read my mind??? Just now I recieved a kind e-mail from him in wich he points me to his RSS-feed. Only minutes ago I wrote a definition for weblogs in my thesis stating that to encourage the reading of ones blog one should have a RSS or Atom-feed. Now this can't be a coincidence, can it? ;-)
