14th in our series introducing you to each of our BlogHer Conference '06 sessions and their speakers, and finding out what you would like to get from each session. Today, I bring you from Day Two:

EduBlogging: Barbara Ganley from Middlebury College, Laura Blankenship from Bryn Mawr and Barbara Sawhill from Oberlin will discuss using blogging in the classroom & to raise academic profiles.

As with every session on our schedule there are about hundred ways the conversation could go, and here are just some of the ideas this session will kick around:

[img_assist|fid=685|thumb=1|alt=Laura Blankenship]Laura Blankenship from Bryn Mawr wants to talk about how to get the world of academia to accept and even embrace blogging. One of her biggest challenges is convincing them that blogging isn't really just about adopting some new technology...it's about people; it's about communication; it's about formal vs. informal learning!

[img_assist|fid=689|thumb=1|alt=Barbara Ganley]
Barbara Ganley feels that blogging brings the power of connections into the classroom. Using blogging can strengthen the connections within the classroom, but it can also facilitate dynamic and useful connections to the outside world. Again, that concept of augmenting traditional learning.

[img_assist|fid=693|thumb=1|alt=Barbara Sawhill]
Of course Barbara Sawhill sees that as one of the reasons academia may be resistant: there is power there, but also the threat. As a language teacher, for example, she has to be undeterred by challenges from those who question her teaching of a non-native language. And she has to be open to learning from native speakers who come upon her classroom blogs and offer insight into actual everyday usage. Openness, transparency, humility. (I think we've all had to adopt those values being bloggers, no matter the blogging segment to which we belong, right?)

There are other topics to be explored, some of which are familiar to BlogHers...like where are the women EduBloggers? How can blogging help raise one's academic profile?

And what do non-academics think of blogging in the classroom? They're hoping some parents and students show up to talk about whether they like it, loathe it, feel confused by it, are skeptical of it, the whole range.

So, that's what we are envisioning for the session. But what do you think. What do you want to learn? What do you want to hear? What do you never want to hear again? What would make you attend this session?