A blog about blogging on a blog, for future bloggers.

Blog. Remember when you were young (or, like me, a few minutes ago) and you would repeat "toast" or some other mundane word what felt like a million times.. until it lost all meaning? I do... Blog Blog Blog! And it's called Semantic satiation, such a fascinating phenomenon. 
I now suggest a laugh until the word "blog" doesn't make you giggle numbly. I'll be typing it a bit in this blog. You giggled, didn't you?!. Seriously, just click here to reset your mind with a little laughter.

Blogs and their affordances. 

My personal reflection

I find blogs to be a fantastic tool for learning. For students like me who learn well by writing, blogs can allow for a sense of anonymity and comfort in publishing work to be critiqued. I am able to publish my understanding of a set reading without feeling the vulnerability that usually accompanies writing on topics about which I'm not very knowledgeable. For my students this can overcome some of the "fear of failure" barriers to learning and producing work.

Blogs, while allowing for anonymity, allow too for ownership of work. Anyone can comment, critique, make suggestions, agree or disagree, but the work remains a product of the blogger's making. Blogs may reflect the blogger's personality- the blog may be comical, serious, or anything the blogger wishes. The individualistic nature of blogs could encourage engagement with set activities, I find it much easier to write blogs when I am able to insert quirky snipits like the above fine print, when I lose interest in the educational content I am able to stay somewhat on task by personalising my blog, then when the light bulb reappears I'm on task just enough to get right back into it.  And, let's face it, it's so much more fun finding this than going off to do the dishes when I get bored.

 

Blogging and SAMR

Blogging could be underutilised as a simple substitution for a workbook, a digital version of pen and paper. Allowing reader comments is essentially a substitute for passing one's book around the room, the exception being if one is fortunate enough to receive comments from people they would not have had access to outside of the internet, more knowledgeable readers or people from across time and space, for example. Such fortune moves blogging up the SAMR scale into augmentation. The ability and ease of linking in blogs has the potential to bump it up the scale further, in this way blogging might classify as modification as it allows for the significant redefinition of the task. The volume of viewers who are able to access, view and comment on a piece of work which would not have been published without the implementation of a blog modifies the process but is not a completely inconceivable process without the technology, not until the concept of followers is introduced. Managing followers, allowing subscribers, blocking persons who "misbehave" incorporating advertising, etc. was inconceivable prior to the blogging technology which completely redefines the task of writing.

 

 

 

Found at: http://www.thethingswesay.com/luck-is-what-happens-when-preparation-meets-opportunity/