Syllabus has an article titled “TrackBack: Where Blogs Learn Their Places” that’s helped me clarify its value in terms of building community. For the larger Weblog community, the author says:
The initial purpose of the TrackBack protocol was to provide a way of aggregating posts made by various bloggers about a particular topic. It addressed the problem that while a proliferation of blogs gives voice to many, it distributes the conversation such that it becomes next to impossible to follow the idea as expressed across these many blogs.
From a classroom standpoint, I keep trying to think of ways to use it other than as a way of allowing students to keep all their comments about their peers’ work on their own sites. That makes it easier for me to assess their efforts in giving feedback since I don’t have to go searching all around for it and they don’t have to take the extra step of copying it into their own space. Their peers get the benefit of the feedback, just not through the comment box. But inside the classroom, can trackback really help build community?
And to be honest, the following is a concept that really got me thinking:
The approach taken was to suggest that someone might start a dedicated TrackBack blog on a particular topic. This special blog would not be used by the owner of the blog to wax poetic on topics of his or her choice, but become a repository dedicated to a single topic. For example, imagine a site, which collects Weblog posts about the Civil War. Anyone interested in reading about the Civil War could look at this site to keep updated on what other Webloggers were saying about the Civil War, see photographs from that period in magazines, etc. This is accomplished when those who do write on their individual blogs about the civil war initiate a TrackBack ping to the designated collector site.
So that’s what that “URLs to Ping” thing is for. The article also says it’s possible to setup a trackback blog of all the posts you make to other Weblogs… Now I’m wondering how I set up a trackback blog in Manila.
Just one note about the article. Toward the beginning is this:
Since then blogging has become a standard tool for faculty, students, and just about anyone who wishes to publish their thoughts worldwide.
Um…I’m not sure we’re quite there yet.
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