Reflections on EduBlogging Pedagogy: Solitude

Providing private bloggers with the skills to become more confident to publish for a wider audience, while providing support for embedded bloggers de-motivated by silence, while providing an expanded perspective involving others for autonomous bloggers, all revolves around the central personal issue: solitude.

As educators, how do we stand in reference to solitude as we interact online with others? How do we view our learners? Our interactions with our own posts becomes as important as how we respond to others – one mirrors the other.

As educators, how do we stand in reference to constant change, to liminality? How do we view ourselves? If, as I think might be the case, the act of blogging is a rudimentary form of capturing the processes of self-making, and as we blog, we shift our attention to different types of blogging that reflects our shifts in personality, (we progress through blogging activities as we work through personal issues concerning identity.

Requiring our learners to rehearse working in these new virtual spaces is essential. These learners need to feel comfortable in a variety of contexts – whether blogging privately, pushing ideas out in to the blogosphere as a celebration of one’s personal voice, sharing experiences with close friends and family, discussing local politics on an anonymous blog, participating in an academic discussion, seeking help and support among a group of mentors – all these contexts are the legitimate concern for educators of the blogosphere.