Should Students Blog?

There have been several blog posts – and many more discussions not posted publicly on blogs – on the question of whether students should blog.

The issue arises in particular for those studying subjects like Biblical studies. Will your thoughts that you post get you into some sort of trouble, for instance with your denomination’s gatekeepers of orthodoxy? Could they affect future employment?

My own view is that the risks involved in blogging – putting your thoughts out there for all to see – are outweighed by the benefits, such as getting feedback on your ideas – assuming you can acquire a readership that will provide such interaction.

Here are some of the recent posts on this topic around the biblioblogosphere:

Brian LePort has posted on the pros of blogging as a student and the cons of blogging as a student. Both posts are related to the topic of a conference paper he hopes to read at SBL, and I am beginning to think that it could be a wonderful thing if we had more submissions on the same subject, allowing a whole “Blogger and Online Publications” session to be devoted to the question of student blogging. I would love to hear some professors with experience comment on the subject from their viewpoint. And we could potentially also connect this with the role blogging has played in cases of faculty being asked to resign by conservative constituents in the leadership of their institutions.

Tom Verenna recently began “clogging” – i.e. blogging about a course he is taking, “course blogging” = “clogging.” This raises a neglected question about student blogging: What does it mean for there to be this sort of public commentary about what goes on in the classroom? And how could more students posting about their classroom potentially benefit – or perhaps in other ways impact and change – the dynamics of the classroom as it has been cultivated up until now, without such technology?

Also of interest: Joshua Mann has blogged on the subject of starting a blog, and Jeremy Myers has a post about people telling you that you should stop blogging.