SCoPE: Seminars: Week Two: Blogging to Expand Your Learning Network

Dear Glenn,
You are a prolific writer and already an amazing, and inspiring leader in blogs and what is happening within the blogging world. I agree that it is not about getting students and faculty to blog. It is more like a developmental process and even an evolutionary process, if people begin to engage and then find that they make time and focus and even discover what their style of blogging really is at any given time. I am still a novice blogger, but I now have three blogs and I have very little time to blog in them though I am moving towards that behavioural goal, and not because there is a need for others to "comment", but more because of the idea of birthing these sites and seeing what I can do with them. Some people have already asked for the sites, but I'm very reluctant to post the sites as they feel like new creations that need more time to gestate, grown, and have substance. I do like commenting on others blogs, and I feel like I give back when I comment. I enjoy some blog content, but something has to grab my imagination or interest -- otherwise I do a surface read and move on.

I'm resigned to being a lifelong blogger now. I want to put more of my art in one of my blogs, including videos from movement work. In another of my blogs, I want to discuss clinical issues and psychological interventions. In another I'm wanting to have distance education outreach themes. I hope to berry pick, and to link up with some other blogs, and also understand more of the networks for blogs over time.
Jo Ann

Re: Week Two: Blogging to Expand Your Learning Network

by Glenn Groulx - Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 5:42 AM

Hi Jo,

Thank you for your post.

I look forward to reading your blogs on movement therapies and art therapies when you are ready to open them up to the public, and I think that blogging in the open is a transition between thinking of oneself as a practitioner to becoming more of a practitioner-mentor.

The challenge is to extend oneself as a blogger into various settings (anonymous, embedded, autonomous, private, networked) so we do evolve and become more comfortable sharing our ideas in various ways.

More and more experienced bloggers (those who experienced blogging in one setting or more, and wish to expand its routines to other types of personal blogs) are encountering the liminal state (as you know, Jo Ann, this is a recurring theme I touch on from time to time). I also see the pull towards setting up separate blogs, each with a different focus, and I also see the appeal of consolidating the streams into one mega-blog, migrating the posts from my other blogs and applying categories to them, so I can keep the posts all under one hosting space, rather than scattered across the net.

I really like the metaphor of the birthing of blog sites, and requiring gestation periods before blogging out in the open outside the safe, secure space of the private (semi-private) sphere.