Aug 312012
I am not at my best at 8am and so unfortunately, I missed the early part of this week’s POT pre-course session discussing blogging but what I did hear was fascinating and got me thinking about my own practice.
At one time I would have said I was addicted to blogging – a blogaholic! I certainly love to read blogs and find that over time I feel as if I know some of the bloggers personally. Most of the blogs I follow for technical or professional information but nevertheless personalities shine through! The ones I enjoy most are those that have a distinctive perhaps even idiosyncratic voice – I may not always agree with them but they challenge me to think, reflect or explore - these are people whose company I know would enjoy! And it isn’t just the post themselves, its the comments I love – the wonderful conversations that flow from one person’s skilfully constructed post.
I would love to emulate that in my own blogging and I have certainly started enough blogs! But if I am honest I am mostly addicted to the idea of blogging – far too often I start a blog with great enthusiasm only to be defeated by the procrastination that springs from my own internal (and perhaps misguided) critic. On numerous occasions I have spent several hours writing, editing and polishing a post only to discard it on the pretext that it has nothing of value to say. In fact the more blogs I have read over the last few years the more intimidated I have become – they are just so good, so effortless, so insightful! Who am I to think I can begin to compete!! The critical voice doesn’t give up!
Yet when I look back over some of my early posts like this one from 2006 or this one on distributed communities from 2010, I realise that perhaps just occasionally I was able to get it right – for me at least. So when someone asked in the discussion – what is a blog for? – I thought immediately – oh wow! yes what is it for? Why do I want to blog? Is it for me? Is it for an imagined audience? Is it to impress, or to reflect or to journal or to explain or to keep me away from online games? What is it I want to say? My answer tends to be All of the above! Not helpful!
Creating and maintaining my class blogs is much less problematic. Although none of my classes are online, all my students are enrolled in IT courses. They are comfortable with a technology and the ubiquitous presence of laptops in the classroom means that we are able to fully utilise any number of online tools. Consequently, it makes sense for me to drive the classes from a blog post complete with links to relevant resources. Constructing those posts is easy – in effect it is my lesson plan (and easily reused in subsequent semesters).
So where does that leave me ? I think I have to remember to focus on what is the most attractive thing to me about blogging – the conversation. I want to share ideas and learning with others, I want to talk to people! Ah yes – that is the key! Living and working in a small regional centre in New Zealand is wonderful but very isolating at times – I want to be part of a bigger community. I am not a lover of video cams or web conferences – I like to be able to think, write, reflect, edit, re-write……to consider my response before I speak it. For me it is the act of writing that provides the insight into what I am thinking – to quote E.M.Forster – “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?”
Are you new to blogging? Are you intimidated by it? Perhaps we should just forget that this activity has an arbitrary label of ‘blogging’ - let’s just imagine we are talking instead! What do you say?
Thanks, Clare. So simple and so helpful. I’m such a talker, but not much of a blogger, so I’m thinking of printing up a “let’s just imagine we are talking” sign and taping it to my computer monitor so that I can remember this.
haha! Pilar – That’s a great idea! I love it
Somehow it does make it a little easier to just think of it as a conversation doesn’t it – seems to take away the pressure that comes with thinking that it needs to be some formal piece of writing!
Thanks Clare. I really like this post. I particularly like your last comment about imagination. Etienne Wenger says learning is a matter of imagination (http://www.ewenger.com/pub/pubCoPToC.html)
- so you are in good company
Jenny
Wow Jenny thanks for that link! It looks like my kind of book – I have put it on my amazon wishlist
I particularly like the last bullet point on that summary – “Learning can’t be designed – it can only be designed for” – that sounds like a good topic for a blog post!
Update! I have ordered the book from amazon – thanks again Jenny!
Ahh this describes my own relationship with blogging, right down to multiple blogs, passion for them (I tell writer-friends this is my genre, some notice without having to be told), posting ambivalence, preference for writing it down over talking to a webcam, synchronous web conferencing. Generational? Physical isolation? (I live in a small, remote and more isolated than not rural New Mexico community ~ our analog to outback).
I haven’t submitted a feed coded for a tag yet because I am not sure which blog to designate… plus that act seems to have a blocking effect.
Yes! Vanessa – the blocking effect! I so know that feeling too – suddenly once I have designated a particular blog as being for something it morphs in my head into something slightly different – more important, more formal perhaps. Is it the traces of memory left from our own schooldays that once you identify something publicly as your contribution to a class then it is open for judgement and criticism? I know that isn’t the case here but I wonder if it is the residue of the brainwashing we were subjected to as kids?
Interestingly I also seem to have this problem with writing things like academic papers etc….When I was writing my PhD thesis I developed the habit of putting my initial draft free writing in italics because somehow if I typed it in normal Times New Roman then I couldn’t just let it be – I had to edit and re-edit until it met some professional standard that I had set in my head! That totally got in the way of just getting the ideas down and took waaay too long to do – somehow the very act of writing in italics meant I could look at it and read through it without the compulsion to make it perfect! A silly game but it worked for me!!
And isolation too – I remember last year being inspired to read about the community you lived in (from something you had posted) and recognised that we had that in common – a love for the small and beautiful place we lived in but a desire to participate on a much larger stage too – wanting our cake and eating it? And why not?!!
Far too inteh-lekchual! Needses moar kitteh pics!! trolololol
In all seriousness though, I love to read blogs myself but I rarely write them mainly because I don’t feel like I have anything of worth to say. Which is why I love twitter, because generally if I have anything at all to say it’s usually not enough to fill a page but I can often crop it down to a fairly comprehensible 140-character tweet. Or two.
Is twitter the poor-mans, or rather *lazy-mans* blogging? Probably. Because I am pretty lazy. And I do certainly tweet a lot.
But to answer the question “why do we blog?”, I think really all it is is that we who blog or tweet are just naturally writers. Writing is what we want to do so we do it whenever and wherever we can because we love doing it. Plus, y’know, the Internet is a fun place so why not try to participate as much and as thoroughly as we can?
“why not try to participate as much and as thoroughly as we can?”
Yes ! this strikes a chord for me – to contribute not to consume – and yes too about wanting/loving to write. There is something magical for me in seeing the words appear, sometimes without a great deal of conscious thought. But you know Kitatojirin as much as I love your tweets, if this comment of yours is anything to go by I would love reading your blog posts even more
Thank you very much for you post Clare, it makes me think, just a little bit more, about the reason I am blogging.
Although I am not new blogger, I started some other blogs during some years, I am completely new. The reason is that, in the past, I did not found what I would like to say. Now I know it but, as you said, I feel intimidated for others. I read a lot and I found a very big level. Anyway this only push me to do it better. I also want to talk, I also want to explain my thoughts and also I have to learn how to do it better, this is also a reason to read all of you.
See you online.
I so agree Clare. Starting blogs but keeping them, up is not easy. But the conversational aspect of blogging at its best makes it such a unique experience. And even though I enjoyed POTCERT last year, I hope that this year we can engage in more commenting leading to conversations…
Bonnie