Smrt Lernins

I know, I know. Worst blogger ever.

There’s a certain part of me that hates to leave this blog lying fallow after two years of regular posting, but I’ll be honest, I just don’t feel as safe sharing information about myself or my family on this blog any more. The incident with the fundie “friend” towards the end of last school year was really the first of a series of events that has me rethinking how much I really want to write here. A particularly nasty comment left on an older entry during the summer, right around the time I was going to get the blog up and kicking again, kind of drove it home.

The internet is full of assholes. Do I really want to share my life with those assholes?

I’ve always been a huge proponent of blogging in general and of homeschool blogging specifically. I’ve also never been one to curb my tongue (or technically, my fingers) about my feelings on certain issues. I know my opinions aren’t always popular, and mostly, that doesn’t bother me. I’m so used to being the odd (wo)man out that having uncommon or unpopular opinions isn’t a new or strange experience. I stand by my words and typically don’t mind defending them, though I draw the line at approve comments whose only goal is to insult/detract/be douchey. When I change my mind about something, I don’t have a problem recanting any previous statements.

I do have a problem putting my life, my self, my family, my thoughts out there when the result is that people are going to be personally nasty. There are people out there who don’t deserve this window into my life, and I’ve been willing to ignore those people because the positive feedback has outweighed the negative.

Now? I don’t really feel as safe. I feel more private. I feel resentful of those people who don’t have anything productive to add, but sure as hell have an ugly word about how I’m doing it wrong. I just don’t know that it’s worth it. I don’t know that it’s worth stirring the pot when what floats to the surface is crap.

I’m very excited to say that I will be teaching again starting in the fall! I really enjoyed the two semesters I spent teaching writing through the various co-ops, and I’ve been looking for a venue to teach again. I won’t be teaching writing in the ‘11-’12 year, though. I’ll be teaching blogging and “digital literacy.”

Here are my course descriptions from the online catalogue, if you can indulge me a bit, for Digital Literacy:

Email, instant messenger, Facebook, forums, blogs – our children have so many ways to reach out to other people with similar interests and wide array of backgrounds. Being online means being part of a large and vibrant community, but like any community, the online world has its own rules, social expectations, and occasional dangerous elements. Do your children have the skills they need to be smart and safe digital citizens?

Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organize, understand, evaluate, and analyze information using digital technology. More than that, it’s the knowledge of how to traverse the Internet safely, how to interact with others online in a way that is polite and appropriate, and what information they should or shouldn’t share. Students will learn the basics of email, safe web navigation, distinguishing between reliable and unreliable websites (a useful tool for research), online etiquette, and how to be a responsible online “citizen.”

And Blogging 101:

Are your children reluctant writers? Are they technophiles who are more comfortable behind a computer than in front of a crowd? Do they have a lot of subject-area knowledge they would like to share with others? Blogging is the perfect format to let them share their thoughts and to develop their passion for writing!

Blogging is a meaningful way to add your voice to the Great Conversation happening all around us. Students will establish and maintain a personal blog, participate in a class blog, learn basics of HTML, and generate content for their blogs that includes text, links, and embedded images and videos. They will learn online etiquette as they comment on others’ blogs and manage comments on their own blogs (with adult guidance). Parents will be provided links to class blogs and access to their students’ blogging accounts (unless declined).

Yeah, they’re a little hokey, but the point is to get parents to want to enroll their children, right? Plus, I really do believe blogging is both valid and valuable (perhaps especially for homeschoolers). I may have mentioned before that I spent two years working for a NCLB-funded grant initiative called Blog2Learn, where I taught middle and high school teachers how to integrate blogging into their (mostly low performing/at risk) classrooms. We had a lot of success with the program in terms of increasing writing output and improving writing quality. I’ve also taught a grown-up version of Blogging 101 (and the follow up, predictably called Blogging 102) at conferences. I feel pretty comfortable and competent in this area.

If I get parental consent, I may share some links to students’ blogs or to our class blog over the course of the school year, starting in the fall. Hopefully you’ll indulge me a little and give them some positive feedback.

I don’t know if it’s due to the relinking of some of my recent posts or the new traffic to the blog or I’ve just finally been around long enough to be somewhat on the radar, but my spam quotient on this blog is way up the last week or so, even w/ Akismet. I’ve switched comments to completely moderated for the time being, until I can get some things squared away and the trolls become bored enough to wander back underneath their bridges.

If your comments don’t appear right away, do not despair (not that you’d actually despair, but humor me, will you?)! Unless you’re a spammer or just can’t behave yourself, I don’t make a habit of refusing to approve comments, even the ones with which I disagree. What’s the point of putting my words out there if I’m not willing to entertain any discourse on them? I can write for my own pleasure anywhere; Smrt Lernins is about being a part of the Great Conversation.

This comes with a caveat, a mighty big one at that: If you can’t behave yourself, if you use my blog as a means of personally attacking me or my readers, if you lack civility and write condescendingly to my readers, if you attempt to batter your point home through a massage barrage of comments, or if you decide to leave nasty remarks on a post that’s older than, say, six months or so (because, really, if you can’t get into a snit in a timely fashion, why should I play along?), then I probably won’t approve them. We are a decent sort of folks here at Smrt Lernins.

Jon Stewart put it best when he said, “Don’t be douchey.” Take that to heart.