I have wanted to blog for some time, but I have not had the courage to do so, at least until now. I have had a RSS reader for sev­eral years now (make that 6 years) and have fol­lowed many in the web stan­dards and dig­i­tal human­i­ties spheres. I think fear was the biggest stum­bling block for me, fear of judge­ment, etc. How­ever, this year I asked my dig­i­tal human­i­ties stu­dents to blog. I could not in good faith require my stu­dents to blog if I did not blog myself. Thus, I bit the prover­bial bul­let and added a blog to my site. So far, I am find­ing it a rather enjoy­able expe­ri­ence (though one I have not had much time to do).

Many of the stu­dents in my class have also found that blog­ging was not some­thing they had con­sid­ered before, but are now find­ing their blog an intrigu­ing addi­tion to their work as schol­ars (as well as anx­i­ety pro­duc­ing one): What to Write, Enter­ing the Blog­ging World, Post­ing, and Com­ing to Terms with Blog­ging. In addi­tion to these posts, Cameron Blevins recently made some very good points about blog­ging as an impor­tant part of his intel­lec­tual and com­mu­nity build­ing expe­ri­ence within acad­e­mia and dig­i­tal human­i­ties in particular.

Only time (and good posts) will tell if I, too, find blog­ging help­ful in con­nect­ing me to a wider world. Ulti­mately, I hope that the stu­dents from my class find blog­ging as good a tool as Cameron does in build­ing intel­lec­tual and com­mu­nity con­nec­tions within their own respec­tive spheres as well as out­side those spheres. So far, it appears that they are find­ing it so.