The Bamboo Project: Advice on Blogging For Learning
So once again I read some great advice regarding blogging for learning. Since blogs are a huge part of PLE, I felt I needed to learn more about what my blog should be. Michele Martin has become one of my favorite resources for helpful information regarding the world of blogging and learning. As I stated before, this avenue of learning is very new to me. I am still reserved with the traditional classroom setting. Maybe I just don’t trust myself to get out and get the information. Or better yet, sort through all the junk on the internet to find the correct information! I guess that is why you need to build up a reliable community to share information with.
Now for this “adding value” part. I am so happy to read something that states add value for yourself first rather than for readers. What a relief to me! As Michele states, a lot of blogs that give advice regarding blogging, as did Stephen Downes in his How to be Heard article, tell you to add value for your readers. But what always got me, is how do I add value to something that is giving me valuable information? What can little ole me give to someone who writes daily or is writing for an audience? I think continuing with this different perception about adding value, I can let go of the stress and fear I hold when I am trying to write. So you may ask, stress and fear? What can you possibly stress or fear about when writing? Well Michele hits it on the spot. I stress because this is a very public forum and whether or not anyone reads my entries, I worry about how I present myself through words. Which leads to my fear. When I read something, I have lots of thoughts and feelings about what I just read. But how do I organize those thoughts and feelings and neatly write them so that others will understand? If people don’t understand what I’m writing, then how can I expect useful feedback! What pressure!!
But just like everything else in life, it takes time and practice.
Now we’re talking! You’re using your blog to learn, so the more you can let go of the fear, the better. If you dig around my blog you’ll see that I have a lot of posts where I’m asking myself questions or putting half-formed thoughts out there. Like this post was a big brain dump of questions and thoughts that popped into my head:
http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog//2007/03/killing_the_mis.html
And this one I actually drew a picture to try to get my idea across (Plus got the feedback that I’d drawn a helix, not a spiral, which made me feel dumb for a minute, but then I decided, whatever):
http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/2008/01/the-social-medi.html
I’ve been blogging for awhile now and actually what I find is that if you’re in a community of the right learners (one big benefit of blogging), then they love the questions and the uncertainty. That’s how we learn. Don’t be afraid of it–embrace it! I promise that eventually you’ll grow to love it.
It’s a problem I’ve been dealing with as well. I hear that you should make the blog about adding value to yourself, and yet you need to create a blog so that others who read it will also get some value – for me, those ideas are somewhat contradictory. I don’t think I can write completely naturally, because I don’t specifically want to divulge myself to an anonymous audience. Plus, when I was brainstorming about a topic for my personal blog, I couldn’t think about a community growing around the same topic. I think the biggest obstacle for me will be finding other bloggers who write about topics even vaguely connected to what I’m writing about.