It is a fact universally acknowledged that every learning experience will somewhere include reference to a blog. If you are new to blogging and wondering what all the fuss is about, try the Guardian article The world’s 50 most powerful blogs (2008) and see Edublog awards for examples of educational bloggage.
Blogging tools are easily available; free software includes WordPress and Blogger. If you have an internet connection then you too can blog. Blogs are Web 2.0 tools for self publishing – free of quality controls and censorship. They’re an example of the power of the internet to link virtual identities and personal life stories, to build virtual networks which may or may not translate into off-line relationships.
So why do we blog? Is it because we can? Or we’ve been asked to? Or we’re being assessed and the marks count towards the end of year exams? Or is it evidence of CPD? Behind every behaviour there lies a motivation.
This blog is a mirror that reflects my role in the Centre for Educational Research and Development at the University of Lincoln, UK. It’s not a reflective blog. I’m unconvinced that reflection should be located in a public arena. Nor is it a diary – for the same reasons. It’s meant to be functional; a Web 2.0 toolbox; a repository of bits and pieces of technologies; postcards of my virtual travels across the Internet. Although reflection has gone into this statement; it’s all behind the scenes; the blog is the end result not the process of getting there. To me, that’s what blogging is about.
So why do you blog?