I created this blog at the end of last year, since I intended to enter the blogging world before it became a course requirement! I hadn’t got around to using it, however, and the assessment imperative was just the incentive I needed to get going. Having made a start, I really took to the medium. Perhaps it’s the ‘blarney’ factor in my background – I certainly seem to have a lot to say. I think Meredith hits the nail on the head in her recent post, when she says that she ‘would have found it more valuable to have had direct experiences to blog about and used literature and research to inform these reflections’. There has to be some motive, and it has to be a creative one, whether one’s blog is serious and academic, or lighthearted and humorous, or artistic, and so on.
I have found blogging a very useful practice for a number of reasons. The blog is a place to:
It is very gratifying to see that I have had so many visitors to the blog – over 800 since March, at the time of writing. And the diverse geographical distribution of the visitors is intriguing. Doubtless some of these are accidental, and the total number of visitors has been inflated by compulsory visits from classmates! But even so …
I also like the fact that blog posts can be augmented and refined through ongoing editing. In this way, the writing can be polished and perhaps even evolve into publishable material one day. Ideas here are in the public domain, open to comment by others, and can be reworked in the light of such feedback. Jenkins puts the point well, in Learning in a Participatory Culture: A Conversation About New Media and Education (Part One):
In a networked society, literacy is a social skill not simply an individual competency. Understanding how information circulates becomes as important as knowing how to put your ideas into words, sounds, or images. Creation is iterative: we reshape what we’ve created in response to critical feedback from others in an ongoing process of innovation and refinement.
I haven’t found it difficult to establish a public voice online. I feel that I am just being myself, and not trying to present a face that doesn’t come naturally. To some extent this voice emerges from the subject matter of my blog, which tends towards the academic. I reserve my more lighthearted comments for Facebook!
Neither has there been any problem with the technology. Being a semi-nerd probably helped! But the thoroughbred boffins have done an excellent job of making the technology very intuitive. As the constructivists would point out, it is usually a case of relating the new and unfamiliar to that which is already known. As long as one is operating within one’s Zone of Proximal Development, there is no great obstacle.
The relationship between my blog and the course is an interesting one. As the blog took off, I realised that I wanted it to be a genuine project, rather than simply an onerous task for assessment purposes. It is also clear to me that this goes right to the heart of something fundamental to my beliefs about education – the best way to learn is to engage in real-world activities in which one has a vested interest. This is the social-constructivist position, and it is a point that has been made repeatedly by thinkers whose ideas I have referred to in several recent posts – people like Sir Ken Robinson and John Taylor Gatto. It could perhaps be summed up in the motto: if one doesn’t love it, one shouldn’t do it. The best learning happens when one is inspired by the subject, and can relate it to one’s previous experience (the constructivist position again).
I’ve noticed that I have tended to move away from simply reflecting on course content, in favour of looking at some ‘big ideas’ in education. Often, of course, the two have overlapped, or intertwined, which is all the better. But I would rather post something that I am passionate about, that seems important, than post on every item of course content just for the sake of it, even if it costs me in assessment terms! There was much of genuine interest in the course, and it has been a great complement to my personal teaching philosophy. I have learnt many new things, and refined others with which I was already familiar. The e-language wiki is a great resource, and one that I’m certain to mine for years. But I haven’t felt the need to comment on every item here in this forum. I think it’s fair to say that my blog has been true to the spirit of the course, if not always the letter.
Similarly with engaging with my peers in their blogs. While I can understand the need for knowledge to be demonstrated in the context of a university course, once this has been achieved there is a risk in commenting just for the sake of it. The latter is onerous and empty, and usually obvious to the reader. I think my intuitive distaste for this is behind my sometimes subversive humour! Genuine feedback, by contrast, is always welcome. This is the ideal of the Socratic dialogue.
As is obvious from the foregoing, I have found the blogging experience to be overwhelmingly positive. Conceived in the heady days of the summer holiday, its birth was induced by course requirements, and it has finally emerged as an organic extension of my own philosophical and pedagogical tendencies, able to stand on its own two feet. I’ve no intention of neglecting it. The conclusion of the course is irrelevant to the ongoing existence of the blog – truly the baby has outgrown the incubator! That is surely the greatest compliment to the course co-ordinator, since it is the goal of the genuine teacher to make his students independent of him. I sincerely hope that I will be able to pass on this enthusiasm to students in the primary-school classes of my future. When it comes to applying the technology in the school context, I will bear in mind my own experiences as a blogger, as well as my educational philosophy, and encourage my students to blog about the things that inspire them. I think that probably has the greatest chance of success.
Simon Kidd 