What a long strange trip it has been! But one that I am so glad I took the time to do! When I first started as a blogging virgin I never knew where this would lead or how I could or would manage it! So I started slowly, asking only one of my groups to blog. In no time, I was hooked with the idea of a virtual conversation to carry on with the ones that were started, and often abruptly ended in class. It has also provided me with another place to connect with each individual, something that is priceless because I am working with so many teachers!
I have also learned that blogging is not for everyone, and I get that. That is why when I tried starting up my own personal blog to see what would happen, I was very disappointed at how non-interactive it was. I don’t think I truly understood the nature of a blog or even the purpose of my own blog and so it sat, floating around in the virtual world, un-nurtured, unloved by all…even me!
It all started when I was invited to be a part of an artist’s blog. She is a young, vibrant woman who I connected with when we worked together in Deerfield. She had married, gone away and was pursuing her art degree and had left the world of teaching and all of her friends and family behind. She started a blog to connect herself with the creative souls that she was missing in her new home, in her new state, with her new husband, and her new career goals. The artful garden was a place that I would go every morning with my cup of coffee as I got to know people, interesting people through this crazy virtual world. It was magical. The conversations were so deep and thought-provoking. This was something I wanted more of!
So that is when I decided to start a blog of my own. But the interaction was not there and unfortunately, the interaction in the artful garden also waned. Busy people, busy lives. So how could I use this medium in my teaching world to make those deeper connections with teachers? Making blogging a part of their grade and requiring each one to go in a certain number of times and have those written conversations. It worked well in one school and so the second semester I integrated blogs into all of the groups of teachers I was working with. And I LOVE them!
I was also discovering the many different blogs that are out there. In the meantime, my sister started up a blog of her own and so it is to her place that I go each morning with my coffee. It is almost like having a daily conversation with her…getting to know what is on her mind and what it is she is thinking about on that given day. I am addicted. I am fascinated and I am upset if there is no fix. Her goal was to write EVERY day and I actually believed her! It is a sad day when I find no new entry on her blog!!
With my sister’s blog I discovered a new sense of purpose for my own. My idea of blogging was to create a virtual community. Hers was to make herself write every day. Could I perhaps change my purpose and make my blog more meaningful and purposeful for myself? I could, but with everything I have going on, I decided to just add things that I really wanted to have there. I would like to get to the point where I do write on it every day…no, not every day. There are very few things that I do EVERY day, other than brush my teeth, but as many days as week as I could. I can see how my sister’s writing has become even more powerful through her writing. Her voice has always been strong, but now the flow of her writing is amazing. Would I, could I become a better writer if I wrote deliberately every day? Of course, the answer is yes, and so this will be an ongoing goal for me.
And then there were the safety issues and privacy issues. So I started looking into edublog where one could close the learning communities and make them more secure, but every time I have gone onto that site I find it SO frustrating!! I do believe there are so many things I could do with it, but blogspot is just so much more user friendly and so with my frustrations in hand, I am just going to stick with what I know…for now. In the future I may consider using edublog if I can get myself to even work my way through one of the menus….can you say overwhelming???
And then in one of my schools the vice principal wanted access to their blog. I had to think this through and ultimately deny her, explaining that even though it was on line that I would never turn their journals over to her so this blog needed to remain private as well. A learning curve for us all!!
Then there is the research I have done as a blogging junkie! It is AMAZING once you venture into the world of blogging what you can find. People connecting through illnesses (my crazy sexy life), discussing the food sources in our world, global warming, politics, education and well as you can imagine the list goes on and on. And then you find one of those blogs that you just love! It is like you get to know a person through their writing and I find myself wanting to read more of their stuff and so I stop in when I have the time and see what they wrote about that week. It is SO amazing because you are in charge and well, it is almost as though you can read through newspaper column after feature articles after information articles but they are ALL of your choosing and the topics that you are most interested in!
I have also gotten to realize that for some the learning curve has been a brutal one. I still insist that those individuals plug through. We live in the information age and part of that is working to keep up with this technologically fast-paced world. I have heard frustrations and worries and also trust and know that for many it will never be a natural thing, but at least it will be something that they have tried.
So what next? Will I continue using blogs next year? I am not sure yet. What I do know is that I find myself discovering new purposes for each blog I create! My latest one is a “holding” place for the summer course I am designing on Music, art and literacy. I can store links to valuable websites, clips I want to show from the web and lists of books, articles and even movies that all relate to music and literacy. Nobody knows about this blog yet, but I will use it this summer as a reference point and also something that each person will be able to leave the class with as a reference point. That I am loving. In some ways it is helping me to be more virtually organized and to take advantage of all of the different ways I can use all of the technology that is out there. I will also reconsider my own blog (http://www.shinesistahs.blogspot.com/) and see just how I can make a commitment to that and if that is something that I even want to do! Check it out if you want to!!
So what have I learned about myself as a learner? I have rediscovered that I learn by observing, watching, using other people’s models and then diving in and doing. I do not like to read “how to’s” or tutorials, I have to “just DO it!” And with my learning style comes a great deal of frustration and then some successes along the way. I see what I am doing as part of a process that may only lead me to a new process or discovery. I am never done!!
I am a blogger and I love it! Wouldn’t you like to be a blogger too?
