billso.com

On Saturday, 5 April 2008, I discussed the issue of stress in the blogging industry. In this billso.com article, my topic is how I use my blog as a teaching tool.

My interests in technology, privacy and management are a good fit with two graduate courses that I teach at Hawaii Pacific University. My IS 6100 course is an overview of corporate information systems. I teach an advanced course called IS 7010, which focuses on technology strategy.

After several attempts at blogging, I’ve learned that I can’t write a headline-driven blog that comments on up-to-the-minute issues. As I mentioned on Saturday, I can work a bit ahead of the east coast news cycle by reading the major newspapers online, just after their web sites are updated for the next day’s print editions.

While I can write and post an article in less than an hour if the topic is timely and appropriate, it’s not fun. Writing on a tight deadline is the kind of stress-maker that I’d like to avoid. I used that model for most of my blog articles until 2 months ago.

Now, I jot down some story ideas, and edit the piece a few times before I put it on the site. I always have at least 10 stories in my inventory, and they are in various stage of editing and development.

I stumbled into this system of writing after years of printing, filing and using examples from magazines and journals in my courses. By posting articles and examples on my blog, I can point students to a growing selection of topics.

Social bookmarking

I’ve made thousands of bookmarks and favorites in my web browsers, and every year or so, I was archiving these to files. Back in 2004, I started using Bloglines to keep track of articles I had read on the Web. Bloglines had a very limited commenting tool that I started using to post blogs for my courses. I’ve been importing the best of these old articles in my billso.com blog, so I can keep using these posts in my courses.

I also started using a social bookmarking service called del.icio.us to keep track of my bookmarks in their web site. I can add or use my bookmarks from any computer, which has become a big time saver for me. Social bookmarking services also suggest new links for their users, based upon their interests. Lately, I’ve been using a similar service from eBay called StumbleUpon to save and find new pages and videos.

Knowledge management

In January 2007, I decided to move my course-related blogs to billso.com so I could create my own little knowledge management system for my courses. I don’t expect to make a living from this blog. The ad links on my site barely generate any revenue. I use this blog to test and evaluate features and enhancements. To remove the ads, I may move my course-related posts to different domain names later this year.

For now, it’s easier for me to post assignment announcements and readings for my students to this web site. The assignments are almost always papers. I haven’t been using discussion forums in my courses. Forums are an interesting tool, but my students are scattered around the world. Synchronous chats are hard to schedule, and deadlines can be difficult to manage. That’s why my assignment deadlines are listed in Hawaiian Time (GMT -10 or HT).

Also see my 28 March 2008 billso.com article on blogging as a business model.