HW8: trust your child and their blogging ability
After both reading “My So-Called Blog” and thinking about my own personal beliefs I have concluded that I agree with the statement that ”Parents should not monitor everything that their middle school children write online.” Middle school can be a very difficult time for many kids and blogging is a way that many of them deal with what is going on in their lives. Most of the things that kids are writing on blogs are innocent, and if your kid is having a really difficult time they most likely are not going to write it for everyone to see. A blog is almost like a publicized diary, there is no need for you to read your child’s diary unless there is a true concern. Nussbaum writes that “Blogging is a replication of real life: each pool of blogs is its own ecosystem, with only occasional links to other worlds.” (page 358) There is very rarely a threat with blogging. Kids will be kids, so let them be. Until there is a reason for parental interference, just trust that your child.
on February 12th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Nice clear position taken here in HW 8, with a reasonable argument for parental trust. You’ve also used a signal phrase (”Nussbaum writes that”) and quoted the text faithfully, with the quoted material properly enclosed in quotation marks, and a correctly placed in-text citation.
The only things I’d have you do differently for citing in MLA style, the style we’ll be using in this class, would be to leave out the word “page” and put the period after the in-text citation, not before: “…to other worlds” (Nussbaum 358).
In terms of framing the quote so that it connects the quoted material to your statements, I think it could use more introduction and explanation. The reader needs to be told the relationship between your statement that there’s usually no need to read your child’s diary and Nussbaum ’s statement that pools of blogs are their own ecosystem. After the quote, too, the reader is left to guess what ecosystems infrequently linked to other worlds has to do with your assertion that there is rarely a threat with blogging. I bet there’s a connection that you understand, but it’s just a matter of making it more overt for your reader.
on February 12th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
You have a good start on HW 9. The feeds for Broadsheet and Life Hacker are perfect–just add a third RSS feed to another blog and the feed for my blog–it’s http://keeneweb.org/tmendham/feed/.
Also, I don’t see the links to the three “Blogs I’m Watching” and to your podmates’ blogs. You may need to go to Presentation/Widgets and drag the Links widget back onto your sidebar, or go to Blogroll/Manage Blogroll to add the necessary links to your list.