Conclusion: Keep On A-Keepin' On, But In a New Way

Emily Strides Forth Into a Brave New World...

Questions to Consider:

Can place-blogging make more visible the material conditions of writing Wysocki ascribes to her definition of new media? 

Does the nature of blogging sufficiently surface the role of technology in composition for those who use it? Can students adequately "consider the experiential and epistemological consequences of their new tools" through the act of blogging, or does the blog format/technology work to disguise those consequences? (Does blogging function for students too much as a means of publishing a final product, rather than as a visible means of constructing discourse?)

Is there a natural division between online places/communities and physical places/communities, or is it culturally constructed? Are the skills for "good citizenship" and place-connection learned online transferable to non-online communities?


Might place-blogging be important for OU students in particular, as a means of connecting to the Athens area?

Weblog of a Place (2)

This is the view from my blog. It looks a whole lot like the view from my backyard.

Weblog of Place (1)

"After writing on this weblog for almost three years, I could say it has become a place. Not only a metaphorical or virtual place, but a real physical place. I feel like this weblog is an extra room in my house--the one with the funky pink wallpaper." (Fezoca, The Chatterbox)

"The combination of the graphic design elements of the web and the prominence weblogs give to the individual writer's voice enables a strong sense of place." (Numenius, Feathers of Hope)

Teaching the Tensions

"Because a place blog is not itself a substitute for the place it represents, its job is not to keep people there; it is only rhetorically successful if it convinces readers to leave it. Place bloggers hope you will return, but only after engaging with places first hand...place blogging can sometimes create a conflict between the time one spends in front of the computer writing and the time one spends exploring actual places."

"This is the dilemma all place bloggers struggle with, but it can be a productive tension if it serves to make the technology more visible to those who use it."

Technologies of Seeing (2)

At one time there were people who thought my grandfather was a technological wizard.

You see, Pap could never make the claim that he'd lived always a stone's throw from where he'd been born, because a war got in the way. During his time abroad, he donated one arm and one eye to the fertility of a German field. Thus barred from making a substantial living as a farmer or coal miner, he became upon his return a self-taught expert in the field of television repair. The one-man business he built raised three children and kept the populations of two counties in prime time, a service that I sometimes think made him a local legend. (When I was teaching at Belmont Tech, I occasionally heard to the effect: "You're Bill Gallagher's granddaughter? The man with one arm? Lord, he used to come fix our TV when I was little!) I can still remember his look the first time he had to ask my brother for help with the TV...the first time that prized knowledge, that had made him a savior to so many, had truly proved obsolete.

He also invented things. He built a mechanized fishing pole he could operate with one hand. Less mechanically, he built a banjo pick to strap to the stump of his arm, so he wouldn't have to give up music. Pap plays the banjo better with one arm than most do with two. If you were to wander into his house some winter's day, you might hear him playing one of my favorites "Cold Frosty Morning," picking in the Scotch-Irish style. It would sound something like this (if this particular player were playing one-armed):

When I think of technology I think of my grandfather, and when I think of home I think of him, who knows every inch of those hills, every plant, animal, and tree--I unite these ideas in one man, yet I have never once thought of "technology" and "home" together without him as mediator. Sometimes I think he is my lens. 

Technologies of Seeing (1)

Front:  Lenses for Writing
"By writing I learned to think about place, which in turn made me SEE it. And the cycle continues...looking makes me listen, makes me alive to the infinite transformations around me that make a place THIS place." (Pica, Feathers of Hope)

"What cannot be conveniently georeferenced and placed in a computer map gets forgotten about...if every place has tales, trying to write them down is a worthy way to bring them to the light." (Numenius, Feathers of Hope)

"The internet also seems to be part of the problem: As the 'information superhighway,' it tends to provide us with vast amounts of information in a very short time. However, Numenius expresses some hope that we are 'not very far off from having narrative-rich geographies emerge from the grassroots side of the web,' suggesting the future collaboration between weblogs and other locative media."

"Drawing on this wide range of technologies, blogging about place has the potential to be a deeply multimodal form of composition, reflecting both the radical changes taking place in communication technologies and the complex and diverse ways we come to develop our connections to place."


Back: Heuristics for Awareness
"The reverse chronological order and expectation of frequent updates invites dailyness by encouraging bloggers to notice the everyday changes in the world around them."--benefits of form

"This online rhetorical neighborhood supports the work of geographically dispersed writers in their ongoing efforts to understand their actual neighborhoods...the inspiration derived from good writing and insight into how others construct their sense of place...foster the conditions for further invention, as place bloggers learn from each other."

Geographies of Audience (2)

I'm amazed at how few of us know the story of how Guernsey County got its name, and just as amazed that those who do know the story aren't fascinated by it.

A group of settlers came to America from the Island of Guernsey. They roamed around the Eastern seaboard for a few years, never content to stay in the places they found. They made their way across Pennsylvania--no mean feat, when one travels with oxen and wagons--and found themselves in southeastern Ohio, meaning to push on for the plains near the "English lakes", where they'd heard land was prosperous for farming. But the women...well, the women fell in love. They looked at our hills and our trees and said to themselves, "Could anyplace be as beautiful as this? As fruitful? No, we know it couldn't." And they told the men they could go on, but it would be without their wives and children. They would stay here, to raise crops and kids. I suppose even if any of the men thought a lake was better than a cabin with a warm hearth under the chestnut trees, they saw the light quickly enough. And Guernsey County took its name from these settlers. (Though I prefer to think of it as taking its name from these women, who had the real rhetorical power.)

Our county was born from powerful women and appreciation of beauty. How could such a birthright ever be forgotten?

Geographies of Audience (1)

1) Audience and Purpose

• To write about a place but not necessarily for an audience in that place; to explain the place for people in other places
• To write both about a place and for an audience in that place (civic participation, activism)

2) The Edge Effect: Creating a Community Online

"The importance of reading other peoples' blogs is not as an escape from the limits of ones own geographic situatedness, but as a means of engaging more fully with ones own place...insight into other ways to engage a place--heuristics and ways of thinking one can bring back to ones own blog."

"We cannot fully understand our local environments unless we understand how they are connected to global forces always acting on it, often without us knowing....If the internet as a technology has driven globalization in many ways, it might also be a medium that enables individuals to better understand the affects of global forces on any local situation."

3) Lure of the Local

Blogging can "create local knowledge that might be contributed to the ongoing historical identity of the places...success for a local blog is measured by its ability to foster deeper local involvement over time."