DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

DukeEngage Blogs is not xanga. There is no module that allows me to select what music I'm currently listening to (Enya, haha); I can't change the background color! This blog has no cool functionality.

Well, of course not. The purpose of this entire program is ... ... ... ah, shoot. I can't seem to find the formal print right now. We discussed it at length in one of the mandatory workshops, though. That is, how the purpose of DukeEngage is, in particular order:

1. to provide participants with (hopefully) life-changing experiences
2. to serve the various communities that the participants have engaged themselves in

There's a reason it's "Challenge Yourself," and then "Change your World."

It makes sense, though. Eight weeks is really not a realistic timeframe to make substantial changes. But it's just enough time to become immersed in the host culture and to gain an understanding of the problems at hand. To start thinking about things differently. To take that first step that is so difficult take sometimes back at Duke University, because of

• homework
• class
• parties
• at least 30 minutes of strenuous exercise daily
• eating
• that cool dude who's visiting and going to blow your mind at this colloquium
• sleeping

just to list a few. I find that it's terribly easy to slip into a parallel universe on the Duke campus. The problems of the world are muffled a little more by the laughter of your friends, the clickety-clack of final paper processing, the roar at the basketball games, and the Chapel bells telling the time: time to go here; time to go there; time to do this with that person and then "Well, I guess I have enough time to do that," and then it's past midnight and you've got an eight-thirty and homework due in a few hours. And when that's all done you just want to relax.

And some other things that you really do care about, too, like poverty and taxes and waste, are just not high enough priority, so you never contribute.

At least that's how it is for me. I certainly know that it's not true for everyone - I'm surrounded by giants, in fact. That's why I chose to take this once-in-an-undergraduate-education-and-lifetime opportunity now, at the end of my freshman year. I simply lack motivation.

So here I am, typing up my first blog entry. To get to this point I had to go through a lot of trouble with resizing and converting small images, mistakenly beginning to type up the content in a search tool query, and figuring out what various components of this blogging interface are, exactly.

From my experience as a novice blogger, here are my initial recommendations:

1. Allow me to choose my graduation year (2006, 2007, and 2008 are the only ones listed)
2. Clarify the "extract" field
3. Complete the date and time component by preventing users to choose the date that the entry was created (though, it is pretty cool; maybe you should leave it in).
4. Provide more built-in formatting (for users less experienced in HTML)

Yeah. Just a couple of criticisms and, moreover, a reason for this entry to even exist. It's a good thing, I think, that I have so many questions about this little technical agent of DukeEngage. I had to use two image-editing programs to get my profile picture to display. Now I'm going to experiment with the ambiguity of allowed markup styles:

Will this show up left-to-right?

Is this line all inverted-like?

Is this strikethrough?

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I think that this blogging experience is the entire DukeEngage program in a microcosm. Here's my thought process:

• You may have some expectations about
  • what you will be doing
  • what you will be allowed to do
  • how things will work
  • what you must do to acclimate yourself
• Social and cultural frameworks have rigid parts
• You will encounter obstacles and you will have to make sacrifices; you will have to adapt
• But social and cultural frameworks have elastic parts
• You may have the opportunity to
  • suggest changes (e.g., my list of blog-interface recommendations)
  • ask questions about large components of the existing structure (e.g., the "Extract" field)
  • do things that were not expected within that framework (e.g., the text styles not included on the formatting toolbar that worked)

DukeEngage Blogs is not xanga. Its ease-of-use and apparent functionality are limited, but perhaps that's just the point. Civic engagement is a two-way street. You can't make changes without changing yourself; and, extending that argument: civic engagement blogging is a two-way street. You can't make certain formatting changes without researching, testing, typing in the source yourself, and then evaluating it. I take back my recommendation about formatting. This blog is professional. No silly tags allowed.

That's all for now. Sorry that this was so long.

- e

*edit1: Bah. The nested lists didn't work. Oh, well.

*edit2: Oh. Now I see what the extract field does. I'm an idiot.

After several months of diligent work, DukeEngage is pleased to unveil its new web site.  In the year ahead, you can look forward, particularly in this section, to active blogging by students and others affiliated with DukeEngage. Please let us know what you think!