In the midst of researching and thinking about whether online learning is significantly different from face-to-face learning, I came across Stephen Downes' 2004 article Educational Blogging, for Educause Review. Four years on and it's still accurate and relevant. The article begins with a description of how blogs have been used successfully at several Canadian schools, giving anecdotal evidence to the kind of eagerness to write that blogging can inspire in some schoolchildren.
Downes shares some caveats about blogging, though. He cites Will Richardson who writes that assigned blogging is contrived, inauthentic. Kids are pretty perceptive - they will notice when an activity is "made-up" for school and then lose interest when the assignment has been marked.
The epiphany of this article, at least to me, is Downes' conclusion that "blogging isn't really about writing at all... Blogging is about, first, reading. But more important, it is about reading what is of interest to you: your culture, your community, your ideas. And it is about engaging with the content and with the authors of what you have read—reflecting, criticizing, questioning, reacting." I've often wondered what I would write about in a blog...well, there it is: I need to respond to what I read and experience that's of interest to me.
Now, it's no problem for me to find things to read - always have loved reading. However, feel free to recommend things for me to read, either by commenting on my blog posts, or by sending suggestions to my delicious account (user:cellodav)
dgm
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