..... JeSsIcA......

Hey Everyone! my name is Jessica.. and just so you can remember I was the girl in the first group that loved traveling and COACH.. yes i am obsessed with anything COACH!! I am a 5th year senior and after transferring twice (NoVA to JMU and then to MASON) i am finally graduating.. and i can't wait! I'm a commuter which really sucks but i'm lucky enough to know lots of ppl who live on or around campus so i can crash with them.

I am a member of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority.
I love watching movies, hanging out with my friends, and traveling; especially anywhere that has white sand, plamtrees, and good margaritas. ;o)

I can't believe that college is almost over and i hope to make this year the best one of all.

Hey Guys!

My name is Colleen and my concentration is Secondary Education Language Arts. In case you are having trouble placing me, I was the five foot TALL (haha) girl in the last introduction group. I am excited about being a senior, but at the same time sad that it is my final year in New Century College. After graduation I plan on attending graduate school to attain my licensure and Master's degree in Secondary Education...So to state the obvious, I plan on becoming a teacher! In addition, I would love to become a coach of a cheerleading squad. I was a cheerleader for all four years of high school and the experience taught me the importance of balancing academics with extracurricular activities.

Currently, I work part time as a substitute teacher for Fairfax County Public Schools. I enjoy working out, more specifically, I love to run. I am pretty relaxed individual and consider myself a "people person." Anyway, I am looking forward to a great semester and hope everyone enjoyed their first week back at Mason!!!

Walking Around, Looking Around

Hello Everyone!

My Name is Raquel. To help you put a face to this, I am the woman in the first group who was writing names on the board (sorry I forgot your name, Jen) and who is training for a marathon, is always hungry, and will be cutting my hair extremely short in a few months.

Now that you all remember who I am, let me tell you a little about myself.

Immediately after I graduated highschool in 2003, my boyfriend and I moved from NJ to DC so I could attend American University. I tranferred out of AU right after my freshman year because financial aid couldn't keep up with tuition increases. I went to NOVA for my sophomore year. Last Fall I transferred (yet again) into NCC at GMU. My concentration is Community Studies and I am currently taking 13 credits.

When I first moved to the area, I started working part time at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Downtown DC. When I transferred to NOVA I moved to Alexandria and began working fulltime at the local FedexKinko's. I now live much closer to school and continue to work fulltime at a closed-doors production facility for FedexKinko's.

Last January I went on a whirlwind vacation to Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten to celebrate my 21st Birthday. On that trip I went skydiving, snorkeling, horseback riding on the beach, visited a nude beach, and saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. This past March I took a class where we went to Puerto Rico for 9 days. I am taking another class this March which takes us to Brazil. (Incase you haven't noticed, I like to travel). I am training with the AIDS Marathon Training Program for the Marine Corps Marathon this October.

I have no sense of direction for my post-graduation life. I want to join Peace Corps, I want to work in a Family Services Center, I want to become a Pro Bono lawyer, I want to go to Africa and work for the Cheetah Convservation Fund, I want to get involved in tourism in a Caribbean island, I want to have a sheep farm in New Zealand. I feel like I'm at a convention just walking around, looking around at all the tables/vendors and but not committing to any of them. I'm sure many of you have felt this at some point or other and can relate.

Well, there's a lot more I'd love to share, but this should give at least a snapshot of my life in college. Any questions or things I left unclear, just ask.

What's So Special About A Blog

First, the technical side. Many free softwares exist that allow most people, even those without any web authoring experience, to create a presence on the web, as long as they have access to a computer and an internet connection. This need not be an individual computer and internet connection. Many writers outside the US add to their blogs regularly via public internet cafes, for example. Read What's a Blog? for a succinct introduction to blogging.

The relative ease of access to web writing via a blog encourages individuals to write regularly, to update their weblogs from many different locations, and, most importantly for capstone, to reflect on, as Douglas Adams would have it, "Life, love, the universe, everything."

Individuals all over the world maintain blogs (or web logs) on virtually every subject you can imagine. One of the most famous is Salam Pax (a pseudonym) who started writing a web log from Bagdhad in December 2002. For the ironic (and iconic) story of this blog's beginnings, and its growing importance as the Gulf War, part II, broke out, read, "I Became the Profane Pervert Arab Blogger."

On 26 August, 2006, The Washington Post published an article analyzing views of the war in Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon expressed in individual writers' blogs. The article points out that several bloggers found common ground with those "on the other side' via blogging contacts:

...in the midst of war, scouring online for views from the other side has been one way for Lebanese and Israelis to alleviate the terrible sense of the impotence of standing by as their countries bled. Thousands of people, often posting in English, seem compelled to try to make some sense of the chaos -- or, through personal narratives, to help debunk stereotypes and misperceptions.

Bloggers from both sides of the border . . . have been providing live updates, commenting on one another's blogs and sometimes linking to posts by bloggers on the other side of the border," wrote Lisa Goldman, a Canadian-Israeli blogger and journalist, on her site On the Face six days into the war. "Will this turn out to be the first time that residents of 'enemy' countries engaged in an ongoing conversation while missiles were falling?"

…English is a convenient lingua franca. The Lebanese blogosphere, drawing from a trilingual Arabic-, French- and English-speaking population, is chiefly English. So when the war broke out, many Hebrew-language bloggers switched to English in a deliberate attempt to reach across the border.

Sample blogs: On the Face (Israel) & Beirut Spring (Lebanon). See also Global Voices Online which links bloggers around the world).

The lead editorial in The Economist (August 26th to September 1st) also recognized the potential power of blogging (sometimes called citizen-journalism) as an alternative to mainstream news media:

The web has opened the closed world of professional editors and reporters to anyone with a keyboard and internet connection. Several companies have been chastened by amateur postings – of flames erupting from Dell's laptops or of cable-TV repairmen asleep on the sofa. Each blogger is capable of bias and slander, but, taken as a group, bloggers offer the searcher after truth boundless material to chew over..."

In an academic context, blogs allow us – also "searchers after truth" – to nurture what are called communities of practice, a concept coined by Etienne Wenger to describe the activities of groups of people who come together around common interests and shared expertise. I certainly think Capstone constitutes a community of practice, even if we don't explicitly call it that. Blogs allow the members of a community of practice, where individuals do not all necessarily have web authoring talents, to build a public presence, which others, perhaps with similar interests in reflective learning and portfolio building, might share.

Welcome

It's Fall. You're planning to write a final portfolio and graduate. I'm hoping to read some dazzling graduation portfolios over the rest of the year. Let's see if we can collaborate to achieve both of those aims...