Yesterday I gave my MUS 108 classes their final assignment: write a blog.  I know that some teachers will ask for “a blog” as part of a class, when that teacher doesn’t keep a blog themselves.  I also know that many of my students will do just what it takes for an A, and walk away having learned nothing.  But I want to open the door, if only for one student, on the joys of writing, and the power of social media.

I started trying to blog in about 2000, when I moved to Cincinnati and became a web programmer.  I graduated from CMU in the spring, moved to Cinci in early summer and started trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.  I decided that the .com boom was where I needed to be, but in order to do it, I needed to know one of the “hot” programming languages.  I chose ASP, gave my self an assignment, and applied for at least one job each day.

That was the daily regimen and it got old fast.  But I’m nothing if not stubborn.  Over the course of my “assignments” in ASP, I developed what was essentially a blog.  I made it public on the internet, and tried to fill it up with things that were interesting.  And that’s where I choked.  I had designed the database, come up with an ugly but elegant interface, worked out all the javascript, all the code…  and then I had nothing to say.

Before that I had put together my first website in about 1995 on Geocities.com.  It didn’t say much, other than “hello world.”  I had posted a resume, some photos, some scrolling text and flashing gifs, but not a lot of actual writing.  So even though I had taken a huge leap in my programming abilities, my problem in Cincinnati remained the same as it had always been.  I just had better tools with which to do it wrong.

I eventually got a job, life moved on, but because I was a web guy I always had a website, I was always tinkering with the mechanics of online publishing.  I don’t really remember when I started writing, but I do remember staring into my empty website from the early days and thinking that I wanted to write.  Needed to write.  Needed to say something.  And so one day I started.  It was a mess, and I made mistakes.  But good learning is like that.  My mission shifted from the medium to the message.

My MUS 108 class had a final assignment last semester (back in the good old days of MUS 107) of writing a website.  That assignment was a technical assignment.  But the blog assignment is a content assignment.  And for some of them, it’s going to be tough.  They get to see and read (or ignore) content all the time, but now that they are forced to take part in its production, they will have to think about it differently.  As part of the assignment they must comment on other classmates’ blogs, review/revise/support/rebut based on comments to their own blogs, and make sure to keep me in the loop.  It’s an experiment, but even if it flops I think I’m on the right path.  Especially in asking them to make their thoughts public and follow up on comments.  They can’t write a piece of fluff and then drop it like a hot rock.  They have to share it, and acknowledge others’ opinions.  They have to own what they write.

I have had two job interviews in the last two weeks, and both committees asked me about my skills in social media.  I gave examples and talked confidently, but I got the impression that they were making the same mistake that I made in the first days of my own website.  They seemed very interested in the mechanism of social media, but not the connections, not the content.  But they understood that there is this thing happening, and they need to get on board.  I hope someday they, like my students, understand that facebook is easy, a web page is easy, but content is hard.  That’s why it’s important.