“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anaïs Nin, French-born novelist who gained international fame with her journals.
Source: Stacey Reid’s Blog, Dear Diary Day, http://www.staceyreid.com/news/?p=4625
Like journals, blogs are valuable for learning because they store thoughts while we develop our personal guiding principles. In the article, “Ten Good Reasons to Start a Blog“, Jessica Balsley primarily praised the medium for helping her stay focused on her career. The benefit of a blog over a journal is that blogs are open to feedback from others, which can help shape our opinions. Writing in the public blog-o-sphere helps us “taste life” more than twice, including additional learning every time we contemplate the questions or conflicting ideas raised by others.
Blogs administered in a formal setting, such as in MRKT 3311, are effective places for publicly evaluating tools, companies or other entities, but the formality seems to limit personality in the writing. The research-base rather than experience-base seems to cause a separation between the author and the subject matter. As a repository for research findings, the writing lacks whimsical sentence styling or admission of feelings. That’s not to say that the opinions can’t still be well-developed and valuable to the global community.
In contrast, blogs might be more effective in capturing the author’s personality when they are self-initiated, like those of the Cornell students documenting their experiences abroad. These blog postings are more varied in length and sentence structure based on the authors’ feelings about their experiences. They are also more story-like, with discussions about the beginnings, middles, and ends. The planned adventure sets the timeframe and framework for the blog.
A framework or stated ‘focus of thought’ seems to be important for any blogger. Educator-created blogs are self-initiated and open-ended and they still center around a main topic. For example, Will Richardson consistently weighs the tension between accepting new technologies or maintaining current methods. By holding this focus, his writing and the feedback he receives from the community will eventually shape his guiding principles on his use of technology in teaching.
Until now, I believed the point of a blog was to participate in a topic discussion that could continue forever. Sound familiar anyone? Now though, I think the intention should be to REACH a conclusion about a personal point of confusion. I think the maximum value of a blog comes from striving to define our personal guiding principles. With that in mind, from the beginning we could ask ourselves:
“What is a muddy ‘taste’ in my life that I need to understand better?”
That should be the framework for vetting out complexities until a conclusion is reached. In the article, “Blogging to Learn,” Anne Martlett-Bragg’s fifth stage of blogging, the “Knowledge Artifact” also implied that blogs should have an end. What do others think about the ongoing nature of blogs vs. the intention of reaching a conclusion?
Jessica, good questions about why and how blogs might be sustained and what their purpose might be. I like how you use the notion of a point of confusion as a mechanism for inciting the blogger to blog as well as the notion of reaching a resolution — of course, as Dana points out, the resolution may just be the end of a blog post or of a blog altogether. I would suspect that the blog would sustain as long as there is sufficient conversation and discussion from the blogger and commenters around the topic of interest – what is your sense?
hey!
nice post this week! I really like how you defined how our blogs in this class have evolved from, reporting on an article to being reflective in your understanding. As teachers, we have to constantly be reflective on what went well (or not so well) and why, why should it be any different for our students to be reflective on their own understanding. I always tell parents that if they want to help their son/daughter in my class to ask them, “what did you learn in geometry today” because if they can share an idea and explain it, they can understand it better. That is why blogs can be such a good resource for students to grow!
Hi Jessica,
I guess I thought it would just continue on and on, until the author stopped writing posts. I never thought of an ending scenario. Now after thinking about it, I think different blogs for different purposes may have different endings. For example, in your post you mentioned Will Richardson. He used to blog on weblogg-ed.com for ten years and then he moved and he states “So, I’ve decided to pretty much bring my run here at Weblogg-ed to a close. ” Although, he is simply moving to a different site, it is still an example of closing of sorts. He also wrote a book on his blogs. So maybe there are different endings, a conclusion, move to other topics or sites, a book as a summary, or simply there is never one to be found. The ending could be that no more posts occur on the blog, but that blog is still there, “static” on the web. Or maybe someone is inspired to pick up where one left off. Another is this course, when it is finished how many students actually keep posting about emerging web 2.0 technologies in relationship to learning?