This is a hyperlink.

Test

This is a test.

Another way to post your work

Some students have had trouble uploading their blog entries from MS Word, or even copying and pasting from Word.  This seems to be because Word automatically inserts formatting and other code that you can't see and don't know is there that interferes with Blogger.com's program.  You can try copying from Word into Notepad, and from Notepad to your blog.  Or you can try this, sending your blog entry via email straight to your blog.  To do this, you need to go into your blog dashboard and choose the "settings" tab.  From there, choose the "email and mobile" menu option and choose your "secret word" that will create a unique email address for your blog.  Once you've done that, you can simply email your blog assignments to that address, and they will show up on your blog!

 

Technology and Society, the Ancient Edition

One of the most profound effects technology has had on society is to give humans the ability to communicate through time and space. Before the advent of writing (about 3500 years ago), the only way people could share ideas was face-to-face. (I'm talking words here. People have used art to convey meaning for much longer than that.) And don't get me wrong. As a folklorist, I've devoted my scholarly study to communication in small groups, communication that often takes place face-to-face. But the ability of the printed word to make connections between people who have never, or could never, meet, dazzles me.

Think about it. I can experience the very words of Plato, Shakespeare and Robert Frost, even though all three died before I was born. I will grant you that sitting at the feet of one of these men and listening to his words would be even more thrilling, but that is currently impossible. (I do have a standing offer in all of my classes. Anyone who invents a working time machine gets an A.) The closest we can come to interacting with great thinkers is by reading their words. And by reading, their ideas are recreated in our own minds. It's a type of telepathic time travel!

Of course, you might say that not all ideas are worth preserving, that the persistence of Mien Kampf allows Hitler's lies about the Jews to influence neo-Nazis long after he has died. And you are right. But I subscribe to John Stuart Mill's belief, articulated in his 1859 book, On Liberty, that "the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." We need to confront bad ideas, even stupid or evil ones, and think critically about them in order to reject them.

But even more than allowing us to commune with great minds or condemn evil ideas, I celebrate print's ability to show us that people are people, no matter the time or place. I'm pretty sure I could have had a great time traveling and gossiping all over fifteenth-century Europe with Margery Kempe. Her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe, reveals a bossy and strong-willed woman who bucked her society's rules to ensure that her ideas and experiences were saved for the benefit of posterity. My kind of woman! Anne Frank's diary is not only a testimony to the evils of anti-Semitism, it is the voice of a bright and perceptive teenager who, like all teenagers, just wanted to be heard. Reading the letters sent home by soldiers of the Civil War allows us to understand what it was like to stand knee-deep in the mud and blood of that crucial American conflict.

In a class about the effects that society and technology have on each other, don't think too narrowly about what encompasses "technology." Humans have been putting tools to use for millennia. And encoding thought into written words is one of the most powerful and transformative of these technologies.

Why Blog?

So, you might be asking yourself, why a blog? What is the point or the benefit of a blogging assignment as opposed to the more traditional academic essay or journaling exercise? Well, I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. This is a new experiment for me, and we’ll see how it goes! But I thought I’d write out my rationale and expectations for this semester’s blog experiment, both to give you some idea of what I’m hoping to achieve, and to make those expectations clear in my own mind as well.

And the need to write down my ideas about the value of blogging in order to make them clear illustrates my first purpose very well. Language and thought are linked. While it may be possible to think without language, it is impossible for us humans to communicate complex ideas to one another without expressing them through the medium of language. And language, unlike the unorganized anarchy of free thought, has rules which impose an order and structure on how ideas are expressed. To write something down, you have to organize your thoughts. That is one of the goals of this critical thinking class, to encourage you to gather, organize, evaluate and ultimately express your own ideas in a way that makes sense to both yourself and to others.

Another reasons why you are blogging in this class, rather than journaling privately or writing academic essays to be submitted only to me for evaluation, is that blogging allows those (hopefully) well organized and considered ideas to reach a wider audience, via the revolutionary ability of the Internet to connect us all. The topic we are focusing on in this class is the effect that popular culture has on modern American society. And I’d be hard-pressed to think of any contemporary phenomenon that has had a bigger impact on our ability to communicate and connect with each other than the World Wide Web. So why not use an aspect of the Web to illustrate that fact? You may have noticed a map at the bottom of the class blogsite. It’s a gadget called a Clustrmap. (Not all of the Internet’s effects on language and literacy, especially spelling, are good ones!) Click on that map and you can see the locations of visitors to our blog. While your blogging assignments are primarily for your own benefit to develop your thinking skills, and secondarily to demonstrate to me that development, who knows who around the world might also read your words and know your thoughts? Who can predict what might come of that?

The final reason for a blogging assignment in this class has just revealed itself to me as you have been establishing your blogs and sending me the links. As I’ve checked those links to see that the addresses are valid, I’ve found I’m really enjoying seeing how each of you has chosen to personalize your blogsite. I didn’t anticipate this at all, but seeing just the few pictures and comments, the colors and designs you have chosen has helped me start to see each of you as individuals. I want to encourage you to continue to use your blog to express yourself. You aren’t required to post anything more than the five assignments due over the course of the semester, but you are welcome to add anything else you’d like to your blog: pictures, personalized layout and graphics, more written posts, links or gadgets. They won’t be graded so there is no pressure to do this “right.” There is no right way to set up a blog, really, so do what you like. I will enjoy visiting them and getting to know you better.

So, those are my thoughts about this blogging experiment at the beginning of the semester. We’ll see if my expectations are fulfilled, and what other, unanticipated effects we’ll discover! Keep me posted (hah! I love puns!) about your own experiences with Blogger.com, the assignments and the results of your own blogs and we’ll revisit this topic in May.

Using Microsoft Word 07 for your Blog Assignments

Here is the test post that I created while recording the instructions for using MS Word 07 for your HUM 101 blogging assignments. Please see this video in the Assignments section of the class Blackboard site.

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog site for HUM 101 at Yavapai College!