Drafting Your Own Blogging Policies

Policy. The very word makes most of us yawn. We associate it with things that get in the way of us doing what we'd really like to do, and with long paragraphs of bureaucratic bloviating. Certainly "policy" needn't plague us here in a course about blogging, right?

Well, wrong. If you think of policy just as a way of clarifying things, putting some parameters around what's acceptable and what's over the line, then you'll see that having a policy or two about blogging can save you great gobs of grief.

What's so special about blogging that it needs this kind of attention? Blogging is about self-expression, and so it pits ones freely expressed opinions against the possibility of offending the target of opinions. Since anything on the web can wind up being captured and read somewhere else deep into the future, blogging puts our present self against our future self, someone who may be more cautious or employed in a different environment. Things can go awry when bloggers are unaware of all the places their words will go.

Activity

Working in tandem with someone who teaches a similar-aged group, divide up the reading of the articles below. Have the questions that follow in mind as you read.

Then, answer the following questions by clicking here:

  1. As you nurture your own personal/professional blog, what policies will you follow about content, self-disclosure, etc.?
  2. And what policies will you provide to your own learners as they blog under your direction?

Describe each set of policies in a separate paragraph. Write the learner-oriented policy in the 2nd person in language appropriate to your learners.

© 2004 - Bernie Dodge. Write for permission to use elsewhere.