As a lifelong learner, you may have been already keeping a private journal, or jotting down ideas for projects, or coming up with new ideas, and jotting them down. Perhaps some of you love reading, and would enjoy sharing opinions with others on different articles or books.
Blogging in a private, password-protected space can be used as a sandbox for drafting ideas, or as a sanctuary, offering privacy and solitude for deep reflection, depending on your reasons for wanting to write.
You might want to re-examine personal experience or cultivate your inner voice in written form so that it matches your strong spoken voice. Perhaps you might want to gain confidence complementing your verbal storytelling skills with matched written skills. Some of you might need private space to get your ideas down, or draft ideas, whether it be letters to your friends, family, or your community.
Back in 2009, Stephen Downes comments on the benefits of personal blogging in his post at
http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-appeal.html
In general, blogging is appealing as it provides a digital legacy. It offers a public side to one’s self for others to witness. It acts as an online backup of crucial content in case one’s PC stops working. Blogging is good for the writer and others to reflect back on and revisit. Blogging is great writing practice for for formal learning as well as a great way to present oneself to potential employers.
Stephen Downes’ comments were prompted by Chris Garret’s article, “Before I Forget” in the Blog Herald at http://www.blogherald.com/2009/07/10/before-i-forget/ who contrasts the personal blog with the public blog, and contrasts the motivations for maintaining both.
Garret’s article explained that the emphasis changes for those writing personal blogs. The audience is reduced to oneself, and to one’s invited guests. He also explains the importance of blogging, more than any other tool, as a systematic method of contributing to one’s digital record, and uses a life-stream to describe the flow of seemingly disconnected, unrelated ideas.
“The stream is made up of many random bits and pieces but when you look back your memories jog and the fragments coalesce into an ordered history” (Garret, 2009, blog post).
The main reasons for starting your own blog vary, depending on your own unique circumstances.
The option to use a blog offers you an invitation to begin a personal, lifelong journey, in which you enter into dialogue with yourself and others and provides you with the tools for engaging self and others in your/their life-streams and become apprentices in lifelong learning.
I can speak from my own experience that the safest route to take to learn how to blog and hold conversations within many differing blogging spaces, is to work with a learning mentor/companion within a starting with a nonformal schooling context before moving into a formal learning setting.
With the help of a mentor, a seemingly casual remark can spark your inspiration, and a well-placed comment will spur you on to share more ideas, and re-think them in different ways. When encouraged by kind words, you will be prompted to try new things, move out of your comfort zones, and explore, and create, and blog to learn. A mentor can suggest resources, nudging you in different directions, and offer suggestions and advice on strategies for improvement.
I welcome you to the world of blogging, a world of possibilities for self-making and transformational learning.
