This one demands some mulling over.
I was recently delighted to read one blogger quoting another about which items
were for blogging, and which for ... well, for something more along the lines
of sinking one's teeth into the subject.
This past May The Edu-Blogger quoted
abject learning:
Ahhh. Finally I feel validated for not being the blogger I should be. This from Brian Lamb:
"My great deficiency as a weblogger is that I never write the posts I really want to write. If I feel genuinely engaged with a topic, I defer the actual writing of it endlessly -- mulling it over, adding elements, seeing linkages elsewhere"
That is exactly how I feel! The most exciting and (hopefully) important ideas that I have I do not write on my blog, but tuck away to blog about later. Or they turn into articles that seem too big to summarize for a blog post. So my blogging becomes more knee-jerk, thoughts of the moment instead of developed ideas that I DO have on occasion, whether this blog is evidence of that or not.
I'm glad to hear I'm not alone. I'm all for open sharing of ideas and using the new web technologies to spread ideas around quicker, so I'll try to do better.
Really, I'll try.
If I understand The Edu-Blogger correctly, what he's telling us (and himself)
is that blogging is only an "off the top of my head" activity,
not really the "think it through" sort of activity that as an academic
he probably feels he should be engaged in. He probably feels uncomfortable
about devoting so much of his time to his blog. From
reading numerous blogs I can well understand this feeling - it's a feeling all
too often verified by the reality of what I read. And yet it's somewhat embarrassing
to read these confessions. After all, what these blogger are telling us is that
they use their blogs to think - that sometimes the writing itself serves as a
reflective sounding board, while at other times the reactions of readers on the
blog can be an even more dynamic sounding board. That's completely legitimate.
It makes sense. But if that's the case, why does making such a confession make
these bloggers feel uncomfortable?
Go to: Why a month?, or
Go to: When is clicking on a link like choosing a breakfast
cereal, or
Go to: It's a wonder we find time to write at all,
or
Go to: Participating/Observing?, or
Go to: Who's going to watch?, or
Go to: How many prosumers can fit on the head of cyberspace?