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The Ethics of Blogging Ethics

By September 23, 2009January 24th, 2018Presentation: Academic, Presentations, Vita

“… we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”

— Andrea Lunsford, in Wired article “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy“

Preface
The web log, or blog, opens up new possibilities for teaching and learning by cultivating social communities of education. The power of blogging as a pedagogical practice is rooted in the recognition that meaning is made and knowledge created in social interaction. As Dewey put it in Democracy and Education:

“Schools require for their full efficiency more opportunity for conjoint activities in which those instructed take part, so that they may acquire a social sense of their own powers and of the materials and applications used” (Democracy and Education, 37).

As a sophisticated yet simple publishing platform, the blog offers a powerful opportunity for conjoint activities of learning.  By opening a rich, diverse and broadly accessible site of dialogical engagement, a blog is able to cultivate dynamic social contexts of communication in which a symbiotic relationship between teaching and learning becomes possible.

The Pedagogy of Blogging
This presentation is illustrates the power of blogging as a pedagogical practice by focusing first on what a blog is, second, on the dynamic structure of a blog, and third, on how this dynamic structure can be leveraged to cultivate robust learning communities. 
In the context of ethics education, this presentation seeks to articulate how blogging allows faculty not merely to deliver content to students about ethical theory and practice, but also to perform the virtues of inter-human ethical interaction with students in light of the theories and practices under consideration.

Blogging thus allows us to perform the ethics we teach.

The Virtues of Blogging

Some Examples/Possibilities

The Ethics, from the Rock blog seeks to engage in public deliberation concerning pressing ethical questions with students, faculty, alumni and the broader local and global community:

Diversity of Expression 

Other Resources



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