Blogging a new trail

When it's 3 a.m. and he's still up studying, Jason Toff blogs from his Harrison College House dorm room. He posts on his online journal about French class, job interviews, traveling and Indian food.

He narrates the "life of Toff" with a compelling blend of funny commentary and serious thoughts, and he's become devoted to documenting his life online.

More and more students on college campuses are using Web logs to socialize, post pictures and create online discussions. Even professors and administrators are getting into the act, from the School of Nursing to the English Department.

Blogs are personal journals that can take many forms on the Internet, allow for comments by readers and be password-protected.

Only 38 percent of adult Internet users know what a "blog" is, according to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, but college students seem to be embracing the trend whole-heartedly.

"The awareness of blogging ... is much higher among college students," than other demographics, Pew Senior Research Fellow Steve Jones said.

One of the most popular blogging sites among Penn students is Xanga.com, where "blogrings" allow users to latch onto one another in groups.

The general Penn blogring boasts 625 members, although bloggers don't have to be affiliated with the University to join.

Toff, a Wharton freshman, thought the Xanga blogs were strange at first, but now he finds himself compelled to post a few times a week with upcoming plans or news he wants to share with friends.

It's easy to see why Toff originally found Xanga peculiar, as the site is a chaotic maze of feedback logs, personal profiles, links and blogrings. Student blogs in the Penn ring have an amateur look, with a clutter of comments and discussions on school, coffee and even sex among pictures and graphics.

But for Toff, the randomness is part of the amusement.

It's fun "just to see people responding to my posts," he said, adding that he's been surprised by his blog's popularity. Sometimes students he doesn't know recognize him at parties after reading about his life, a situation which he describes as simultaneously embarrassing and flattering.

Toff avoids sharing the more intimate details about himself because of the public nature of blogs and does not consider himself to be as dedicated to blogging as the more frequent blogring posters, who sometimes post several times a day.

Although some estimates say 8 million Americans have created a blog or Web-based diary, that's only 7 percent of all adult Internet users.

The Pew Project also found that blog creators are more likely to be young, well-educated men, as 57 percent of bloggers are male and 48 percent are under age 30.

Jones said collaborative Web-based tools in general -- such as popular campus networking site thefacebook.com -- are gaining favor among college students. Students appreciate being allowed "a voice of their own" on personal blogs, he said.

More importantly, college students aren't just posting personal anecdotes.

"It really surprised me, the variety of topics they're blogging about," Jones said of the initial research he's conducted concerning the content of college blogs.

Jones noted that student blogs frequently include political and social commentary.

College sophomore Taylor Buley started a more formal, public blog last semester.

He created the blog "freshpolitics.us" to provide a nonpartisan discussion forum for political news.

Buley sees blogs as a medium that currently appeals to a niche market among Penn students, and notes that many of the 150 to 300 readers who stop by his blog every day are college-aged.

Seven student writers -- three from Penn -- now keep the blog updated, and Buley's commentary is occasionally referenced on other political Web sites and blogs.

In addition to students, professors and administrators across the University are also becoming innovators in the movement by incorporating blogs into lectures or using the dialogue capabilities to enhance class discussion.

Penn Nursing School Dean Afaf Meleis started a blog just a few weeks ago, posted on the Nursing School's Web site.

She considers her blog to be an interactive form of communication with students that allows discussion to go beyond e-mail.

Meleis has posted thoughts on current health news and a review of a recent conference, and students can respond anonymously if they choose.

In its first few weeks, the blog attracted an average of 675 hits each weekday.

"It's still limited," Meleis says, "but I expect it to pick up."

English professor Charles Bernstein has blogged on "just about everything" for a few years after being inspired by the Internet work of a local poet.

As part of the poetry community, Bernstein has helped to promote blogs and electronic collections of poetry that have been at the forefront of the academic blogging world.

He uses password-protected blogs as part of the courses he teaches, where his students have access to the sites and post responses to readings.

"I like to as much as possible encourage informality," Bernstein said, noting that as a poet, his interest in aesthetics drives him to create new course materials.

Bernstein uses an online syllabus and an active class blog to reflect poetry's role as a cultural form, as opposed to using the more traditional Blackboard software for his classes.

Other Penn blogs include the Wharton MBA admissions office's Web log page.

The blog, created last September, contains frequent posts from admissions officers about deadlines and industry news, as well as student diaries that detail the lives of real Wharton MBA students. Posts and diaries are not censored by the admissions office.

"We're the first school that's gone down this road," Admissions Associate Director Alex Brown said.

He added that "other schools will probably follow suit."

Jones says there is little concrete data on the content of college blogs -- probably due to Pew's finding that blogs were only recognized as a legitimate part of Internet activity in 2004 -- but there's growing interest in studying them.

And, with a new Web log being created every 2.2 seconds, according to technorati.com, the trend is showing no signs of slowing down.

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