The Brown & White

The College of Education turned to blogging this year in order to help share the developments of the program and build a sense of community within the college, said Tamara Palmer, the director of marketing and communications in the College of Education.

The blog's writings and videos are posted by students in the College of Education. The Web site also allows students to post pictures so that they can be shared for networking.

"We started talking about the blog in the spring semester and made it over the summer," said Tamara Palmer. "The first blog appeared at the end of the summer."

The blog has some unique qualities that students do not often find on the blogs of other colleges.

Bloggers are allowed to write about whatever they want to, because the blog is not censored so that students are able to speak their minds.

"It is a completely open forum," Palmer said. "Students can write about their thoughts on education, their cat, personal opinions, or politics."

It is this democratic style of blog that has made it seem attractive to other students. Will Brehm, '08, and graduate student, said he would like to see other colleges at Lehigh and other universities start to do the same thing.

"The fact that they don't censor the blog is really great," said Brehm. "Blogs are usually about advertising, but this one is different."

Palmer said that the blog was developed mostly to create a sense of community within the College of Education, and the rest of Lehigh.

The blog will allow students to find out what events are happening in the college.

Brehm said it would be valuable for the other colleges at Lehigh to do the same, so everyone can learn about the developments that students are making in each college.

The blog is open to all College of Education faculty, staff, students, and even alumni, said Palmer.

The idea is that the College of Education will be able to build an online community by using the blog so that everyone can stay in touch and share their ideas. Alumni can also look back and find out what recently happened within the college and contribute their own ideas as well.

To start the blog, the College of Education picked students from each discipline to start the foundation of the blog, Brehm said. The point of doing this, rather than opening it without any designated bloggers, was that it allowed for there to be a diverse group of voices representing all areas of the college.

Brehm, studying in the Comparative and International Education program, said he has been blogging since he was a sophomore at Lehigh. He said the collaborative aspect of the blog is what makes it so unique. It is not just one person's views on one subject.

Even though the blog puts everything in complete control of the students with its against censorship policy, Palmer said it was not designed to attract more students to the College of Education. It was meant solely for the purpose of building a better community.

Brehm said postings on the blog are erratic. He usually posts once each day or every other day. This way, he said, you can write whenever you feel like, and it does not seem like a homework assignment.

So far there have only been three to four different contributors, even though about fifteen have signed up, Brehm said.

"Hopefully, once it gets going it will have a snowball effect and build," said Brehm.

Visit the blog: www.lehigh.me.