Blogging

Blogging - What a new concept for me. One which has been hard for me to embrace due to my nature of wanting to have an interactive conversation. Since I have two ears - I want to listen to your comments and have a discussion now. Waiting for comments and then not knowing how to access the comments was not the most engaging way to start a blog. Because of this assignment and this course I am admitting you have made me do this blogging business. I have not wanted to look at other blogs. Why have I felt this. Well I am used to doing my own learning and thinking of ideas myself. I have found that if I listen and look at others ideas first then I seem to take on their ideas and do not come up with my own creative and sometimes fantastic ideas for myself. Yes sometimes my ideas are way off what the teacher may want however in many cases no-one else might have considered some ideas and it is my own creativity I want to embrace. Not the creativity of someone else. For this creativity to work I have to know what I am doing first and be in the creative zone for learning and thinking of new ways. I have found the following quote. This seems to sum up how I felt about the assigned blogging. On the other hand I enjoy the fact that it is something that we have to do to pass this course as it has made me embrace this type of communication.
"By its very nature, assigned blogging in schools cannot be blogging. It’s contrived. No matter how much we want to spout off about the wonders of audience and readership, students who are asked to blog are blogging for an audience of one, the teacher." When the semester ends, "students drop blogging like wet cement." Richardson wants to teach students to write with passion, but he notes: "I can’t let them do it passionately due to the inherent censorship that a high school served Weblog carries with it."34 (Educational Blogging, Downes, 2004).

blogging as a genre of writing may have "great value in terms of developing all sorts of critical thinking skills, writing skills and information literacy among other things. We teach exposition and research and some other types of analytical writing already, I know. Blogging, however, offers students a chance to a) reflect on what they are writing and thinking as they write and think it, b) carry on writing about a topic over a sustained period of time, maybe a lifetime, and c) engage readers and audience in a sustained conversation that then leads to further writing and thinking."36(Educational Blogging, Downes, 2004).

So blogging makes us think about what we have read and what we are writing. Yes this is a great tool to have us engage in the content and knowledge required. How would I use this tool in a school? Blogging would be great for students to interact with each other on assignments. Even better it would be great for them to interact with a sister school around the world or to interact with experts in a field of study. As in all of our e-learning course - "the mind bloggles at the scope for these tools".
Signing off now - (See I still wonder if any of this blogging is at all interesting to any of you).