We will be blogging regularly during the semester (and hopefully continuing afterwards as well!). There are at least three good reasons for this.

The Linux community is supported by its members. There have been countless times I have been searching for a particular command, or for a solution to a particular problem and come across the answer on a blog post written by someone who had the same question I did. Keeping an active blog is a way to participate in the community that we will all rely on.

It also gives me (the instructor) an easy way to get more feedback on how the course is going for everyone. This can occur both passively (in reading blog posts I get the sense that key concepts haven’t been explained well) or actively (you write about a specific problem with the class, or an assignment). I am always open to constructive criticism, both regarding the content of the course, and my own teaching style and philosophy, but it’s very difficult for me to address potential conflicts if I don’t know they exist!

Last but certainly not least, an active blog is a component of your professional digital identity. Prospective employers or graduate school admissions departments will almost certainly conduct an internet search before selecting final candidates for interviews. They will find your profiles up on various social networking sites, embarrassing photos and all. You only have limited control over that. But what you have much more control over is whether or not that is the only piece of digital information they have to evaluate you.

Don’t stress out about it. No one expects blog posts to be professionally published articles. They should be thoughtful, and well written, but do not need to be ground breaking. Posts along the lines of “Here is my understanding of topic X so far, but I’m still really confused about how it relates to Y and Z” are perfectly acceptable.