Blogging

I was glad to have had the opportunity to participate in this blogging exercise. I had previously been curious about blogging, and didn’t really understand what a blog was. I’d never read a blog.
I didn’t even know how to find a blog.

This was a great setting in which to explore blogging. Many of the students appeared to start out at the same level in which I existed- the newbie level. My inexperience with this communication form initially created a feeling of vulnerability for me. It was only a short time, however, until I felt pretty comfortable.

I liked having a group of four students to bounce ideas around with. I can see why people become cyberbuddies. Personalities start to show over time, and I looked forward to the contact that we had. I learned a lot about some interesting technologies, and had some laughs. Frequently, when I learn about a new twist in 2.0 technology, I don’t understand why we would want this new twist. The blog discussions really helped with that kind of question. It was particularly fun because the group member that was introducing the technology was also new to it, so as she discovered characteristics and uses for it, she shared them with us. We were discovering it together. When one of us asked another group member a question about their technology, the question gave the researcher/ instructor (another title for the group member) a different direction in which to go. I do love the discovery process, how one thought or discovery takes you to other thoughts and discoveries, which then might take you to a place you could never originally have imagined.

I enjoyed sharing information and thoughts about my technologies with the rest of the group. Researching the topic, knowing that there were three other women waiting (with baited breath!) for the next installment gave the search a bit of a personality. I asked myself what might be interesting to all of the group members (including me). I found the Elgg topic to be more of a challenge than iTunes U. I was fortunate to have found EduSpaces, since it utilized Elgg in a broad topic that was of interest to my entire blogging group.

During this exercise I discovered that I had actually run across blogs before, but just didn’t know it. When I have Googled a topic in the past, I’ve thought some of the results were “weird”, because instead of being a website or article, it was like this person babbling (in text) about the topic. It seemed as though I had cut into a personal conversation, and that the information was certainly useless for my purposes (I wanted facts, or scholarly papers!). I didn’t make the connection between these results and blogs until I took this class.

I have found some interesting blogs in which I would consider participating in the future. In our field, blogging could help ease the aloneness that a librarian might feel in her solitary library position, especially if she didn’t feel a lot of support from the administration. The support that blogging buddies could provide might prove vital to a librarian’s job happiness, and the information exchanged could be the difference between an effective program and an inspired (and effective) program.

I noticed that only once during the whole semester did a person from outside the class join in on one of our blogs. I still find myself asking, “Why would somebody be interested in reading a blog entry from me (if it wasn’t a class requirement)? This could be answered by realizing that the more I participate within ongoing topic threads, the deeper my thought or topic exploration becomes. I will then perhaps hit on an idea that others would like to hear about and explore further with me.

Brooke