Blog Hui 2006

Paper Summary:

This presentation will examine how blogging can be used as a tool for media and community activism. It examines a number of examples where blogging has been used as a training ground for converting activists into writers with a view to enabling changes in social attitudes toward unpopular and unconventional groups and ideas.

Presenter Profile:
Irfan Yusuf is a 36 year old Sydney-based industrial relations and human rights lawyer. He is also an occasional lecturer in the School of Politics & International Relations at Macquarie University.

From humble beginnings of writing in small community-based publications at age 16 until he was forced to take time from lawyering in February 2002, Irfan’s writing was largely limited to small ethno-religious based publications.

In February 2003, Irfan published his first online article in the progressive Muslim website MuslimWakeUp!. Since that time, he became an almost regular contributor to the site.

Irfan’s work has also featured on other North American and Middle-East-based Muslim websites, including NaseebVibes, The American Muslim and Arab World Books.

Irfan started writing his first blog, Planet Irf, in July 2002. His passion for writing and blogging really took off after he co-authored a piece for the Ramadan diary of MWU. Since then, he has built up a stable of five full-time blogs and one seasonal blog. Irfan also contributes to the Ihsan blog which has over 25 contributors from all shades of Sufi and Muslim opinion.

Since April 2005, he has also been publishing commentary and opinion pieces in mainstream newspapers in Australia and New Zealand. His pieces cover a broad range of topics including: religion and spirituality, gender relations, international relations, conservative politics and legal issues. Irfan’s articles have appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Canberra Times, Brisbane Courier-Mail, New Zealand Herald, Dominion-Post and The Press.

Despite a long history in Australian conservative politics, Irfan’s blogging and writing pursuits have offended conservative Parliamentarians. He was even named in Federal Parliament after offending one prominent conservative MP. Irfan’s blogging has also landed him spots on community and mainstream radio.

Irfan is also a columnist for a number of news and commentary websites including www.NewMatilda.com, www.altmuslim.com, www.WebDiary.com.au and www.OnlineOpinion.com.au. His blog entries have also been cited regularly in the Australian e-zine www.Crikey.com.au.

As a confirmed addict of American humorist PJ O’Rourke (though more likely as a means to avoid defamation proceedings), Irfan’s preferred writing genre is humour and satire.

Paper summary:
This praxis paper is about informing one’s practice through ‘blogging’ or ‘diarising’.

As many a budding trainee teacher knows, research informs teaching, or at least from the literature one reads (for example, Roach, Blackmore and Dempster, 2001). Occasionally, however, it also leads one away from teaching. This paper will discuss in brief the evolution of The Power House from a mostly personal online diary to a blog where mostly online reflections of educational theory and women’s studies topics are discussed. Some thought will also be made with regards to womensstudies.info, a proposed collaborative blog to be shared among volunteer gender and women’s studies undergraduates past and present. The author’s hypotheses about the likely success or failure of womensstudies.info will be discussed, and how it may hinge (Reason, 2006) on ethics.

In turn, the paper will talk about how use of The Power House ‘informed’ [1] the author’s teaching, changed his career focus [2] from primary to tertiary level teaching training, and [3] how it is proposed this evolves to an experimental method of the author to encourage interstudent participation in women’s studies research, teaching and learning.

Presenter profile: Jonathan Ah Kit
Jonathan is an honours candidate in Gender and Women’s Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington College of Education. He popped his head through the door of the women’s studies department at the college 1½ years ago and never left. His paper talks in part about why he didn’t return to the teaching programme, and how he thinks perhaps his diary helped inform that.

His research interest is currently in magistrate Oswald Mazengarb’s seminal 1954 report on juvenile moral delinquency in the home of his youth, Lower Hutt, and earlier inquiries on alleged sexual ‘deviancy’ in the 1920s.

When acting as if he isn’t studying, he pretends to be webmistress of Student Christian Movement Aotearoa, a liberal Christian student group, and masquerades as the secretary of its VUW (Victoria University, Wellington) branch.

Paper summary:
This research examines the convergence of Learning Management Systems and Weblogs. It examines the use of hosted blog software and syndication to integrate Weblogs into password-protected LMS environments. We suggest that existing Learning Management Systems inadequately support Blogging, as they do not allow for the natural development of social networks.

Using this framework, a Weblog-based Learning System is proposed to test and evaluate the efficacy of integrating Blogging systems with online learning environments.

The proposed Weblog-based Learning System will create an ‘Institutional Blogosphere’. Each user will have a Blog, and Courses will be presented as collaborative Blogs. As social software, it enables Blogging beyond the institution while providing options for access control. User’s content can be exported for inclusion in e-Portfolios or importing to a personal Blog. Theories of Weblog-based Learning Management Systems have been put forward, although most follow of the model of Administrator – Lecturer – Student. Drawing on the concept of an “Architecture of Participation”, the proposed system will focus on facilitation, rather than management, of online learning.

This paper will present a case for a Weblog-based Learning System, exploring the possibilities of an Institutional Blogosphere through a prototype Learning Facilitation System.

Presenter profile: Kate Rodgers

Kate is a Master of Science candidate at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Her research interests are in the use of blogs in Online Learning, and how they can be implemented within existing learning environments. Her other research interests include accessible and usable web design, narratives of games, hypertext and wireless networking.

She has diverse experience in educational Information Technology, having previously worked as a trainer, administrator and designer. Her day job is an LMS Systems Administrator, and she runs a small consultancy business providing web design and information management services. Passionate about web standards, she is always finding ways to extend the limits of her CSS/XHTML skills, although her clients sites often come before her blog.

When not working or studying, she spends way to much time tinkering with her Macs and collecting retro toys.