Why do we blog?

Miguel’s wistful. Anne’s feeling dull. Wesley’s introspective. Doug’s worried that some of his favorite bloggers are trying to compensate.

This all serves to highlight the results from the education blogosphere survey that I did last month. We edubloggers have a variety of reasons why we blog:

• to try and make change
• to have your voice heard by a larger audience
• because we learn so much from others
• to find other like-minded souls
• to foster reflection
• to remember what we might otherwise forget
• to get stuff out of our heads!

and so on… We have multiple, overlapping, sometimes conflicting reasons for blogging. And thus the diversity of the blogosphere reflects the diversity of our humanity.

We’re all trying to make sense of this stuff. It’s not always easy.

I concur with Miguel:

Can you find knowledge in unlikely places, just like a beginner would, and then give that knowledge away? Can you put aside the list of edubloggers that everyone links to, and find new voices?

Help me make my list as long as possible? Let’s all explore some new voices while simultaneously hanging out with old friends.

Tags:  technology+leadership, McLeod, blogging, Guhlin, Johnson, Fryer

Comments

[A Mercer]

1.

I don't know about anyone else, but the a belated, but grueling, flu season has hit, and I always find January a PITA to get through. It's a dark, cold, nasty month, and only half-way through the school year. I ALWAYS feel more negative in this month.

My blogging, and ed tech stuff is going better than anything else at this point, but I'm at the start of a lot of new efforts there, so I'm in the "newly-wed" stage.

[Rick]

2.

You've hit on a powerful question here. At first, it was an intriguing latest-tech fad for me. It quickly evolved into a way to connect with other educators and pick their brains about various issues.

[Vicki Davis]

3.

I find that it is important to look for blogs outside my current profession. Another great place to go is the Stumble Upon tool in firefox! I love this!

[A Mercer]

4.

Here are some ideas:

1. Find a blog with an extensive blogroll (like this one), pick a random entry that you are unfamiliar with, check it out:

here is what I found, a nice Tufte influenced site: http://infosthetics.com/

2. Find a Wikipedia entry that is flagged as neutrality disputed or some other type of controversy, and check out the arguments. I did this recently with the Jesse Jackson entry. Hansen's Disease had some interesting stuff too.

If this is still too boring, then maybe it's time to check this (http://getafirstlife.com/) out and then turn off the 'puter, and get a life?

[D Harter]

5.

I'd add that we also blog to offer support to the ideas that we believe are on the right track. We validate those thoughts by adding our own to the mix. Like a petition with comments, only sometimes the "statement" of the petition is still being fleshed out as people are getting on board.

[Patrick]

6.

The key word for me when I blog is "network." I am trying to expand the ideas that I already have by finding their counterpoints elsewhere. Being introspective only has its merits for so long, and the need to crash into others has to surface. The lone genius stands less of a chance of success in today's world than ever.

Christian Long of Think:Lab put it best in a recent meeting: "sometimes we need to get out of the echo chamber," and read some non-edubloggers.