The Construct

Author’s Note: This has been a very messy piece with a lot of terms thrown carelessly in the mix. I apologize if you’ve stumbled upon this mess. But such is the purpose of this blog. Mostly masturbatory and selfish.

I was working on a post entitled “Hegemony and the Pinoy blogosphere” and I can’t seem to finish writing it. It was starting to become more of a thesis rather than a blog post. For one, I don’t want to waste the better ones of my writing by self-publishing them here. And I do intend to work on this particular topic for my masters thesis.

A friend and I were discussing all the recent events in the Pinoy blogosphere. The (not so) recent issues of blogging elitism and other scandals have definitely caught our interest. The main issue of our discussion – the concept of a blogging elite.

Hegemony is the existence of dominant bloc of society, that, through influence over another bloc gained not through force but through gained acceptance by the subverted bloc.

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Recently, I received an e-mail from one Dave Barnedo, a supposed Chairman/CEO/President of a couple of startups (You have to be one if you us “my” with company). He’s supposed to be “proposing a business collaboration.” Well, those are in quotes since all he mentioned in the message is that he’s starting a call center and a Japanese language center.

I got the message through the contact form I have for this website. Headhunting via blogs. That’s smart. But I don’t think this guy is doing it smartly. A business proposal through e-mail riddled with grammar lapses. Now I’m really no grammar Nazi but teaching business writing absolutely made me critical of how you get messages through. And this absolutely sent “Wanna work a crappy job?”

I’ve been receiving a lot of job offers and interview invites from other companies and I’m not really in the job market now so I just dismissed it. I was supposed to forward it to my sister since it involved that “Japanese” catch word but I decided not to after I did a Google-driven credibility/background check on this guy.

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Dimaks guessed it right off the bat. I’ve been working on a car blog – AutoJab.

AutoJab‘s another Bloggy Network blog and I’m taking over it as site editor/lead blogger (Heck, I’m the only one working on it now). And I’m loving it. Despite my busy schedule, I was able to post 41 entries already. I’m a car blogging machine.

Funny how small talks with the boss can end up. I told him that some day I’d want to own a business something related to cars. So I shared to Jacob my interest with cars and suddenly he offered me AutoJab.

So if you’re a gearhead like me, please drop by AutoJab for the latest news and information about cars and driving.

A few months ago, I wrote my views on the use of blogs as a tool for enhancing Filipino student’s competence in English. That was before I started teaching in UP Diliman. Time flies and now, midterms are just around the corner. I guess it’s time to share a few more insights to what I’ve posted before.

I’ve tried factoring in blogging as a requirement particularly in my Basic College English classes. I generally required them to keep journals and their journals will be part of their final grades. Since I was striving for a paperless classroom, I allowed them to just submit their blogs’ URLs for me to check. Out of an average of thirty students in class, only eight (per class) opted to take the online route.

In addition, as an extension service to my students, I opened the forums on this site to serve as a discussion group. As of this writing, it has 579 Posts in 89 Topics by 62 Members. A decent number given that my students are all busy with their other academics too.

In any case, here are some of my experiences so far.

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Three days of DynEd training and I felt I lost three precious teaching days. Now know how the teachers in my teacher development seminars with my former company felt. Well, not necessarily the same, since I was a really good facilitator and we have catered lunches then. And at least I always had the upper hand in terms of IT knowledge compared to my trainees.

Well, the training was okay but the learning software was already intuitive and there was a teacher’s manual as guide to I don’t know why the heck it lasted three days. And compounded by the fact that there are no classes on Friday, officially, my schedule is f*cked up. F*cked up big time.

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