Student blogs effective but need revamping

With such an elevated interest in social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging, one’s online persona is essential to his or her real-life personality. Blogs in particular have transgressed into pivotal and personal outlets that have contributed toward today’s information overload and simultaneously have developed channels for specific niches.

Since blogs are inexpensive – usually free – to start and easy to maintain, many universities in Philadelphia and across the nation have rightly observed the impact blogs can have on prospective students and parents.

Temple, the University of the Arts, Drexel University and LaSalle University have initiated student-blogs to serve as outreach programs for prospective students and parents and have created programs that sometimes pay select students to document their college lives online.

It’s a seemingly win-win situation: While the university appears more accessible, student-bloggers are also often paid for their work.

But Main Campus, which boasts a state-of-the-art TECH Center, lacks a reliable digital stage for student-blogs. Temple features a handful of Owl Ambassadors’ student-blogs on the admissions Web site, but the blogs are unorganized, unstructured and rarely updated.

Temple uses WordPress, but unlike UArts, the admissions page only provides a link that navigates the user away from Temple’s domain instead of embedding the blogs right into Temple’s site.

Student-blogger Danielle Lovier, a junior musical theater major at UArts, has been contributing to the art school’s blog since she arrived in Philadelphia as a freshman. Lovier said for high school students, it’s important to decide on a school based on an unfiltered perspective.

“Many kids that end up going here tell me that I had an impact on them deciding to come here or making them excited about coming here,” she said.

Not only do student-bloggers offer a more transparent look into academia, blogs provide a more personal experience of college life.

Lovier writes for the blog in a conversational manner, uses amateur pictures and routinely provides links as resources to her audience. She presents student life on a smaller scale than a generic campus tour but encompasses a much larger audience – the World Wide Web.

For student-blogs to promote more transparent institutions, they must rely on honest bloggers.
Senior journalism major Kyle Bagenstose created the “Cherry and What?” for the average busy, impatient Temple student, he said. The C&W’s voice is informative, humorous and blunt. While it can nearly cross the line when it pokes fun of faculty, such as President Ann Weaver Hart, the blog also reports pressing issues to the college community, and its social significance has developed into a paramount daily, online news source for Temple students.

Similarly, Bagenstose said student-blogs allow prospective students to view the university at a new angle.

“School newspaper articles have the ability to question the university, but not in the daily, conversational way blogs can,” he said.

For students who apply to far-away schools and can’t make the trip for a school tour, blogs allow for the prospective student to control the length of his or her virtual visit. And if they like what they see or read, they’ll keep coming back for more.

While students are given almost complete control over their content, the Temple blogs lack consistency and structure.

Neglect of uniform content by Temple’s blogs destroys any personal level they could have with prospective students. As the trend of online media continues to consume the daily routines of youth, Temple’s student-blogs are in need of a virtual makeover.

Matthew Petrillo can be reached at MattP@temple.edu

Philly’s nicest nerd: Q&A with Geekadelphia.com owner Eric Smith

Any topic can and will become divisive on a blog. Even petty issues, like the change of Harry Potter’s release date, aren’t safe from debate. That’s why Eric Smith, proprietor of Geekadelphia.com, is an anomaly in the online nerd community. Rather than capitalize off discontent, he’s supporting his fellow geeks. He blogs about do-it-yourself projects, posts pictures of cakes shaped like video game characters, and organizes geek-centric events, such as the upcoming Iron Man party. Of course, all this philanthropy doesn’t make him any less of a geek: When I tried to secure an in-person interview with him, he insisted we speak over “Gchat” instead.

The Temple News: How did you get your job?

Eric: It was a self-started project by myself and one of my close friends, Tim Quirino. We just wanted a place to ramble about things that interested us and have a site to host whatever silly videos we’d make.

TTN: It seems like Philadelphia has a pretty large and involved blogging community. Was there a desire to be a part of that with Geekadelphia, or was it really just for your own sake?
Eric: Philly’s blogging community is made up of some of the most fun and creative people in the city. One of our writers is trying to do a weekly feature on a Philly blogger. We’re trying to take advantage of our site’s traffic to help out our friends. Everyone should do that.

TTN: How do you think Philly’s geek scene is distinct, if it is at all?

Eric: The Philadelphia geek scene is full of do-it-yourself entrepreneurs who are pretty much all about giving back to the community. The Hacktory, Indy Hall and the iSepta people are awesome examples of that.

TTN: Where do you think the future of the geek community is in Philadelphia?

Eric: I think a lot of it lies with big, community building events. The more these people get together, the bigger the projects seem to become. I mean, it wasn’t too long ago that Philly had its first Ignite event at Johnny Brenda’s. I’m sure plenty of geeks got together because of that.

TTN: Do you think geek is the future? Or are we still an outsider subculture?

Eric: I think geeks are slowly becoming a more accepted presence, sure. Personally, I’d rather see a Shia Labouf movie these days instead of an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick.

TTN: Do you and Tim pay any bills with Geekadelphia? Is there any kind of monetary benefit to being a part of that community?

Eric: Nope, no money whatsoever. We’re going to start selling ads, but right now we only make enough to pay for our hosting.

TTN: So what do you find yourself geeking out to lately?

Eric: Anything in regards to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Sam & Max. I’ve been waiting for those two games forever. Also, any news related to that Outlander movie – that looks so horrible and I can’t wait to see it.

TTN: Dude, I have high hopes for Outlander. I’m really into that kind of awesome, B-movie stuff. I just really like the idea of a group of guys using other people’s money to purposely make bad movies.

Eric: I don’t know, man. It looks like one of those movies that’s going to be so bad, it’s amazing, (i.e. Starship Troopers).

TTN: So what are your plans for the future, aside from crash-landing back on earth to fight an alien?

Eric: Well, we want to start throwing more events, and we’ll be launching a podcast, thanks to Benjamin Gilbert, [a senior journalism major], in the very near future. We also just launched a comic strip.

Garrett Smith can be reached at garrett.smith@temple.edu.