Starting your First Blog for Education

It's not the first time I've read Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts by Will Richardson and it probably won't be the last. I've seen the chapter titles before and the ideas are familiar, but with this reading new ideas have come to my mind. For example, I realized how much I enjoy learning and discovering new concepts.

I also was struck by the idea that the best way to get involved in blogging is reading other blogs. So I hope to be an example for this class and find and read blogs that interest me. Then I will add my comments and organize my life so that I access these blogs on a regular basis.

So far I've started four blogs for the past several years each with a different purpose. First was a personal one (denvygail.blogspot.com) as an experiment to report what I do and think. It hasn't had a great past but I hope it's future will be better.

The next was my professional one that I use for this class, related classes and for any thoughts about technology. It's called Digital Inklings.

In the undergraduate technology class each student creates a blog to track the lessons, programs and what they have learned each week. So a third blog connects to this process at fourtwentyoners.

Finally I realized from my siblings emails and questions about our past and life as children that a better way of communications these stories would be through a blog. My audience is not into blogging so this failed miserably so far. I called it Binders and Draft Horses.

Hindsight tells me that I could have created one general blog and used tags. I guess that a part of trying something, making mistakes and life-long learning.

The most difficult step of almost any project is the first step, in this case coming up with a purpose for a blog and hence a name or title. That's your first challenge. Good luck!