Welcome to ToddBlogg!

OK we are in business. This is the dedicated blog for our class. I will get all your addresses up here for you as soon as I can. What I would like is for you to use your blogs both for class posts, and for anything else you feel like putting up, since I think we can learn from studying how electronic forms of discourse work; how they are both similar and different from other forms of discourse. For example I learned today about one convention by violating it on facebook--I was told that one does not post on one's own wall. This, it was hinted, was very uncool! Yet no one wrote down any rules about it--everyone just knew that it was "not done." There is a word for those who have not learned the rules about an electronic form of discourse: newbie! Those who know the rules but violate them anyway are sometimes called trolls....

One set of conventions characteristic of this form of discourse, of blogging, is a focus on networking and connection--linking to, quoting from, and commenting on other people's blogs. There is also a whole politics of blogrolls--the list of blogs one links to from one's own site. People get really invested and even upset about these things. For us the connection might be a tad artificial, since we are obviously joined only by enrollment, but let's see what kind of community emerges, if any, from this form of communication. Sorry for the long post--another violation of blog etiquette. Long, rambling posts. Time for some poodleblogging.