Starting to Come Together

Today I wrapped up a draft of the curriculum for my Intro to Lit course. Because the course is a 25% hybrid, I decided to make that same portion of the course grade dependent upon composition of a blogfolio. I'm calling it that because I'm thinking of it as an ePortfolio that's entirely blog-based. I was so impressed with the combination of ease with which I could set up this blog and its apparent creative and connective functionality. In the course of researching ePortfolios and writing about them in my dissertation, I came to believe that ePortfolios can foster student engagement by virtue of supporting integration of identity aspects. But I also ran into a lot of corporate nonsense coming from folks evangelizing products they're either selling or trying to justify their own purchase of. Perhaps a blog provides the good without having to buy the bad.

Of course I realize that Google is a corporation. It isn't offering this great tool out of the kindness of its heart; corporations don't have hearts. Information about lifestyle, tastes, and surfing habits is being collected. But if I go into it with full knowledge of that, I'm not sure it's as terrifying as it initially seemed. I remember being nonplussed when an ad popped up in my gmail window that happened to be shockingly relevant to my research interests. Once the panoptic unease had settled, I started to think it was a fair trade: free software for behavior monitoring. I'm certainly capable of resisting advertising, even if it's very well-targeted. I've spent my life watching television, after all. In fact, as with television, I'd actually prefer it if the advertising I encounter on the Web were more relevant to my interests. As the poet/teacher Jim Bertolino used to wonder aloud, "Where's the harm in that?"