Blogging

I’ve taken a break from writing/posting over the past few months. There was just always so much to do and never enough time to reflect in any kind of worthwhile manner, or at least in any sort of public way. Looking back now I know that it was partly a lapse in my own confidence, and partly just normal life and work getting in the way of my time to take blogging seriously. But I’m back after some real consideration as to why do it at all?

I have to admit that blogging holds a certain fascination for me, not just my experimenting with “daring” to post my own blogs, but learning to spend at least as much time reading and following other blogs. It is really a kind of special phenomenon; not unlike a magical kind of “putting a note in a bottle and throwing it into the sea”. I could be writing this and sending it out where anyone could read it but no one ever will. But the magic is that it just doesn’t happen that way with blogging. I throw out my note in a bottle but while I’m out at the oceanside, I pick up four or five others. I read those, find a few interesting ideas, people I want to connect with. I send them back their bottles and still others find them. Meanwhile I’m inspired to create more notes in more bottles of my own. The whole process creates a wonderful web of connections in a very new and exciting way.

Just this summer I heard the story of Allan November meeting Dave Truss for the first time. They got to talking when Allan realized that Dave was the author of the Pair-a-dimes blog, a blog Allan had already been following. And Dave of course, was similarly reading Allan’s blog. Without ever having met before, they were already connected and able to find ways to work together.

This ability to make connections through our writing and the ideas in our writing is very powerful. Consider it in the school context. Students can set up blogs and write on topics or issues that they are learning about. The blogs can be designed to protect the students identity but yet the site can still be in the public realm so that the students have an authentic audience.

Then add in Google Alerts and the possibility that students will draw in an audience of people who watch or follow their issues. So for example, if I set up a google alert for “Naomi Klein”, when a blogger somewhere in the world makes a reference to her, I receive an email. So I check out the blog and may be able to comment on that bloggers viewpoint regarding Naomi Klein. Or, by setting up a google alert for myself, likewise I can find reference that my students make to my comments or actions. Recently, for example, I found reference to Peter Scott’s blog through google alerts and so was able to add my thoughts to his blog regarding something I’d done and his field study work.  Powerful tools for powerful learning.