Why Blog?

During this conference, it is not uncommon to hear advisors admonishing their students about attending sessions. We all worry about whether the students will be so excited over being in D.C. that they lose sight of what brought us here in the first place. One of my students, however, had the chance to give ME a hard time about attendance, after I was a no-show to “New Media and the 2008 Presidential Election,” an early-bird session that we were both planning to attend. (So much for leading by example. Thanks for saving me a seat anyway, Chris.)

I had spent most of the morning try to find free wi-fi so that I could e-mail an updated version of the JOUR 3600 exam to Mrs. B. (Mrs. Brocato, Marie and Sharis: thank you for making sure the test ran smoothly in my absence!) Consequently, my first session of the day turned out to be a mid-morning one: “BLOGGING FOR ADVISORS.” This year, the NSU group is blogging from the conference for the first time, and I was eager to find other ways that I could incorporate this new media tool in my classes and curriculum in the future.

The panelists – Rachele Kanigel, San Francisco State University; Joe Gisondi, Eastern Illinois University; and Christina Drain, Pensacola Junior College – showed examples of blogs that they had created and supported for journalism classes and student media, along with others they developed as personal teaching tools. The amount of time and creativity that they devoted to blogging was impressive and inspiring.

I left this session with high hopes for our “Student Media invades D.C.” blog. Eleven of us from NSU are writing about what we’ve seen, done and learned, in our own words, from our own points of view, over the course of our time in D.C. Yes, it’s an ambitious project to undertake in an already overscheduled 72-hour trip. Plus, we only have four laptops with us AND are too frugal to pay for the hotel’s ubiquitous Internet access.

However, if we can pull this off – and I wholeheartedly believe that we can – this project will exemplify what our journalism department and NSU student media can accomplish. Thank goodness I found some free wi-fi. We’re going to need it.

Dr. Lee