Should faculty keep blogs?

Rochelle Mazar, an Instructional Technology Liasion Librarian discusses the pros and cons of faculty blogging in this post.

from the post:

I've used this space time and time again to extol the virtues of blogging; it's not that I'm just dazzled by the technology, I genuinely believe that the venue has real promise. Linking ideas about information literacy from a library science perspective with pedagogical theory, and with the criticisms faculty and students have of university education as it currently it is currently configured, I think blogs could go a long way toward revolutionizing the classroom. In short, I think that when you have a medium to sketch out your reactions to the things you read, a constant, personal venue, you get in the habit of composing a post every time you get an interesting idea. You don't read things and just store them away; you read and react, you write something down. Blogs can help encourage the habit of seeing the world of discourse as a conversation rather than an avalanche of information. And being prepared to respond means your critical thinking hat is never off. That's information literacy. Always with a question, always engaged, never on autopilot. That, I think, is the goal of a university education, regardless of field.

That said, what does it mean to be a blogging faculty member? Duke University's Chronicle published an article that briefly notes that some faculty members are uneasy at the idea of keeping a regular blog.

Mazur writes:

There seems to be a correlation between the idea of a personal weblog and random venting and private thoughts, ideas and comments that should circulate only from friend to friend over beer. Is that what worries non-tenured faculty?

More from the post:

Perhaps that's the guiding principle of keeping a weblog as a faculty member, or an administrator, or a librarian, is less about ethics and more about being audience-aware. Your blog can actually be fairly personal and reflective of your real life, as long as you remember who your audience is or can be. Everyone has little anecdotes about their lives that they like to relate; before professors posts one, they should ask themselves whether, in a casual setting, they would tell that same story to a student.

Her stand echoes my own. Blogs mean many things to many people. Because of my position as a faculty person, I would never discuss deeply personal matters on a blog, as some do. That being said, I agree with Ms. Mazur that "it's okay to have a personality, right? It's okay to care about and talk about the politics of the moment, international events, conferences, and so forth?" I have used my personal and professional blogs much in the way that Mazur describes as "a public sandbox where you learn about new things, try out new technologies for use in the classroom and discuss their pros and cons, littered liberally with ideas about your work and your field..."

This post is as eloquent an argument for faculty blogging as I have read!