mentoring panel presentation2

Virtual Mentorship:Intentions, Absence, Accidents, Communities

Steven D. Krause | Eastern Michigan [email protected] | stevendkrause.com

Required Mentoring ≠Mentoring

• My MFA and PhD advisors, but are they really “mentors?”

• “Chuck”

• (Great, now I’m Chuck...)

Steven D. Krause | Eastern Michigan University [email protected] | stevendkrause.com

Mentor defined, hairs split

• There’s a difference between “mentor,” “advisor,” and “teacher”

• Mentors are discovered

• Blogs are discovered, too



Unintentional/Absent Blog Mentors

John LovasDeAnza College


“Blogs as Writerly Spaces” Survey

• “My primary/main blog was about....”

• Bloggers write about topics, not (just) themselves

• Bloggers’ audiences are interested in those topics, not (just) the bloggers


“Parallel Play”

Creative Commons, via http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenr/



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Blogs as Writerly Spaces Survey

On average, how many comments does your blog receive each week?

ResponsePercent

ResponseCount

0-5 42.0% 37

6-10 18.2% 16

11-15 9.1% 8

16-20 10.2% 9

21-49 9.1% 8

50-99 4.5% 4

100 or more 6.8% 6

answered question 88

skipped question 14



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I view my blog as a community for my readers.

ResponsePercent

ResponseCount

Strongly Agree 22.7% 20

Agree 28.4% 25

Neither agree or disagree 25.0% 22

Disagree 15.9% 14

Strongly Disagree 8.0% 7


skipped question 14



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I see my blog fitting into a larger community of bloggers with similar interests.

ResponsePercent

ResponseCount

Strongly Agree 34.1% 30

Agree 42.0% 37

Neither agree or disagree 12.5% 11

Disagree 9.1% 8

Strongly Disagree 2.3% 2


skipped question 14


Where have the blogs gone?

• 2009: Dennis Jerz: Jerz's Literacy Weblog<http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/>

• 2008: Alex Reid: "Digital Digs"<http://alexreid.typepad.com/>

• 2007: Elizabeth Losh: "VirtualPolitik"<http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/>

• 2006: Clancy Ratliff: "CultureCat: Rhetoric and Feminism"<http://culturecat.wordpress.com/>

• 2005: Collin Brooke: "Collin vs. Blog"<http://collinvsblog.net/>

• 2004: Jenny Edbauer: "Stupid Undergrounds: I Found It on the Street" http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/%7Eedbauer/blogs/jenny/


Where have the blogs gone?

• Not gonna talk about “blogs are dead...”

• ...But check out http://cogdogblog.com

• Mentoring isn’t forever either....


mentoring panel presentation2

Education