Reflections on Reflective Blogging

Well somehow it is the middle of term and this week Rob asked us to take some time to examine our use of blogs and Twitter over the past month and a half. Its hard to believe that so much time has past since we were first told that using these social media tools would be a major course component. I was pretty hesitant at first but here I am now, blogging and tweeting and with no major catastrophes as of yet.

I found the most difficult thing for me was to find a blogging voice. I think blogging is best when its casual yet insightful; one of its great assets is that a blog is not an academic journals or a dense books but instead provides relatively short and accessible pieces of information that the reader can sift through and consume at will. From personal experience I know the blogs I like best, and am therefore far more likely to regularly read, are those that are interesting and written with a sense of humour. In my posts I can see my attempts at keeping things light and humorous, but looking back it wasn't as easy as one might think. After, ahem, a 6 year undergraduate degree formal academic writing has become not only natural but I would say almost a crutch. Though they may have more of a ranting, unstructured quality than traditional history writings, blog posts such as mine from two weeks ago on the historian as artist vs. scientist, retain that sort of dry, impersonal language that is all too easy to fall back on. While it is easier to rely on traditional methods, a blog post needs to be more than coherently written and intelligently argued. It needs to be interesting and it needs to be engaging.

In my short blogging career I have assumed that my purpose is to provide personal thoughts and insights that my readers might appreciate. Lucky for me I get a captive audience (you folks!) who have a vested interest (marks!) in reading and responding to my posts. Also, I think my Mum and Dad read this sometimes (Hi Mum and Dad!). But I always try to keep in mind an imaginary broader, less invested internet audience that might peruse The Public Schmistorian, however unlikely this may be, in order to keep things interesting. Trying to be both relevant and interesting has turned out to be a significant challenge, but I think a few of my posts (specifically my posts on the Bionicles archives and HistoricLOLs) have come close.

I think that because I am new to blogging and all too aware of the standards set by great blogs, I find it difficult to use my site in a truly reflective manner. Again, years of schooling has me thinking of writing as a refined, well-researched product, rather than a public process, but I believe in the philosophy of collaborative learning so I'm just going to have to figure out a way to get over it. Examining the timing of my posts I can see the effects of this blogging attitude. I am persistent in publishing one post a week, usually in the 24 hours before class. Effectively, it would seem, I have turned the blogging process into a weekly assignment, complete with self-imposed deadline, as this is a format I am more familiar with. While I think this method is adequate, it doesn't really take full advantage of the blogging medium. I would like to work towards using The Public Schmistorian as more of an immediate place for developing thoughts and reflections.


With the exception of my most recent post on the value of Bionicles archives, I have generally stuck to to subject material related to our Digital History class. Rereading my posts it is clear that I am an author stuck between two realms. While I am concerned with critically assessing, for example, the impact of data scraping on the artistic qualities of historical research I also continuously bring my writing back to the realities of public consumption. Academic criticism is very important but what I have found especially interesting, which both our Digital History class and the Public History program more generally have stressed, is the idea of audience. How do we make history relevant and accessible to a general public? More specifically, how do we increase levels of public historic consciousness without relying on individuals' motivation to seek history out? This theme of communicating history to the masses is especially prevalent in my Bionicles and HistoricLOLs posts.

As for Twitter, well, I can't say I'm in love with it. First off, given the havoc that facebook has caused in terms my productivity, I'm not sure I really want another social networking site in my roster. I found that once I started following more than a dozen or so people the tweets flowed in regularly and the tab labeled  "(10) Twitter / Home" or "(42) Twitter / Home" or "(346) Twitter / Home" was extremely distracting. I have to close the tab which means I often forget about it for days or even a week. As my addiction to facebook attests, I could most definitely find a way past this annoyance were I so motivated, but Twitter hasn't convinced me yet. Though I know it can be used for the power of good, doing public history and other such admirable things, I find the whole process can tend towards the narcissistic. I talk about myself, my thoughts, my opinions enough in person that I'm not sure I want to extend this to the Twittersphere. Also, I make really bad pun-ny jokes; not everyone needs to be subjected to them. Twitter can work quite nicely, however, when promoting a specific project, like Caitlin is doing with UWO's medical artifacts collection, so I haven't completely ruled it out yet.

As I just posted on Twitter, reflecting on my very stunted blogging and Tweeting I felt like I could empathize with Justin Bieber trying to write his autobiography at the tender, dreamy age of 16 - there just isn't that much there to work with. But I feel like this blog, like the Biebs' biography, is only the beginning of a long and talented career and I'm going to stick with it.