It took a little debugging to get backBlog to work for me (the apostrophy in the title was the problem I think) but it seems to be working now. I will email the class with directions. Alternatively, they may just want to use email as that would be the simplest for them to implement.

I am encouraged by this initial success to try other ways to modify my blog layout. But of course, this should be secondary to content.

One of the interesting things about Blogger and it's ilk is that they often list "the last ten updated logs" which represents a pretty random selection. I like looking at some of the titles that come up. My favorite so far was "An Alien Ate My Wallet" which sounds like something I might indeed want to read if I get a moment. Since starting this assignment, I have glanced around at some of my colleagues blogs and the blogs to whom their blogs referred me, and there are an awful lot of very interesting blogs out there. Any number of cartoonists, writers, scholars, etc. whose work I tend to follow have personal blogs up and running. The question is, do I want to know what these people are thinking and doing when 'off duty'? Some of these I have glanced at have been fascinating, foreshadowing no doubt the master works to come from these authors and scholars; watching these great works evolve in front of our eyes, perhaps even contributing to that process should we make a comment or two could be wonderful -- if one could find the time to read them all. I suspect some of us will get so caught up reading the blogs, we'll no longer have time to read the actual books, etc. I am also aware that many of my favorite authors, Philip K. Dick to take one example, led lives that might, how may I put it without being sued? -- may not entirely live up to the audiences' expectations. I remember one Canadian Dick scholar talking about his disillusionment when he finally met Dick in person and discovered him to be --well, kind of an ass. How often do we get to meet our idols and risk such disillusionment? But the personal blogs of our heroes puts as all at risk for this sort of thing!

Which in turn raises the issue, I suppose, of how students may react reading the blogs of their professors. Will it, as I once hoped for personal web pages, increase classroom rapport? Or potentially backfire terribly?