Blogging...good, bad or ugly?

Blogging conjures up loads of very happy thoughts and times for me. It “found me” in 2007 when I started travelling. I knew I wanted a permanent record of my time away which wouldn’t get lost, or become unreadable and could be shared with others.

 I have always loved the idea of keeping a physical diary to, but I knew I would struggle to keep it up for the 9 months I was away. Probably every Christmas from the age of 7 -17 I got a diary, and every year, my resolution was to keep one. If I could place these diaries now, I guarantee I would be able to tell you what happened on the 1^st and 2^nd of January from 1990 – 2000, but from the 3^rd January onwards the pages would be blank!

I have found this blog to be a totally different experience to my travel blog . My  travel blog was to serve as a record of the events I wanted to remember, I would say more than the emotions I felt. It also acted as an “online postcard” to those at home. Even the days that I felt were “insignificant” or “nothing in particular happened”, I wanted to reference as these could trigger many more memories later on, which they did. I still love going back to it and how reliving the memories. In some ways, I now also see how it was quite therapeutic in making me feel connected to home as I was letting everyone know what was happening.

This blog is more focussed on reflecting, sharing my opinions and challenging my ideas. In terms of the usefulness of blogging for reflecting, I think it is a very valuable means of doing so, but in the same breath, I stress that I find it valuable to me. As eluded to in this blog, I am a computer person, writing something down physically is not how I do things. In fact I know if I had to write this on paper, it would take me twice as long and I would suffer writers block. Having a space that specifically forces me to consider my opinions towards a subject provides me with the focus to reflect.

I can see also relate to how blogging could terrify people. The fact that it is public, there are so many blogs out there to compare to and people can openly critique them is daunting. This can also pose another issue that blogs, specifically used for students to reflect, are used to write what the student thinks someone want to read or what they are being assessed against, rather than what they actually feel. They may use it as a “tick box” exercise rather that what is true to them. Experiences may be exaggerated or also played down, with sometimes the biggest fear not being the public’s opinion, but their peers and how their thoughts compare to this group.

In summary, my attitude to the usefulness of blogging in aiding reflection is it’s a tool that works for me. As with any tool, it won’t suit anyone, and that’s why there are various ways and frameworks available to choose from. We are all different, so a “one size fits all” tool for reflecting would be liquid gold!  It is the role of the elearning professional (with or without the “e”) to find what works best for their students when it comes to reflecting and also base this on the purpose the reflection (is it personal/public, to be assed or not etc).  In the same way different learning styles are incorporated into the classroom, should different reflecting styles be included to?