Post # 5: A Reflection

I dreaded the blogging assignment because I thought it would be too much preparatory technical reading - - instructions written by engineers and not actually for anyone to read and comprehend. While it seemed that it would be good to know how blogs work, given that I read them every day, I did not feel that I would have anything to say to the universe in general. It turns out that I was wrong about both setup/operations and posting.

There were four free hosting sites offered in the assignment and I had no reason to select one over the other. I did, however, want to avoid the one(s) with the steepest learning curve. Online evaluations were not particularly helpful so I asked people whom I know who do blog for their recommendations among the four and why. Blogger became the clear choice – it was simple yet powerful, linked with Google so it would have a coordinated interface, and the price was right (free).

As I start to think more about blogging post this assignment I think I will move away from Blogger and toward a paid site. It is my understanding that whatever is posted on Blogger becomes the property of Google. As much as I believe in social capital and contributing to the commons, I want to have more control over what could be a longer term body of communications.

Easy though Blogger is easy, and it is easy, almost every step had to be retraced and redone. With some repetition this quickly became less so, but I still sometimes wonder how to get to where I want to be from where I am. After the basics I experimented with a different format, with embedding and with gadgets. It has been fun to see some tangible results. Perhaps best of all, and unexpected, the comments from my friends (even if not posted) generated discussion and, for me, further reflection. That may have been the best result. As an asynchronous communication, blogging loses some of the person dimension that synchronous technology has, but the comments on the posts and the ability to receive comments in return, with all communications open to view by others, makes it more communal and less impersonal. Although Bates and Poole’s Table 3.1 A Classification of Educational Technologies by Structural Characteristics in Bates (2003) would place blogging under asynchronous two-way communication, its support for more varied information (personal profile, other links, following, favorites) made it feel like a hybrid between asynchronous and synchronous, even though it is not.

There have been more supports for generating ideas than I had expected - even deciding what to include in this reflective exercise: there was an article on "Application of Blogs to Support Reflective Learning Journals” (Pang 2009). The specific readings for this unit are all timely and address different dimensions of DE, however, I think that in addition to being good practice, it was critical that the assignment be based on readings beyond our two class texts. Neither Moore and Kearsley (2005) nor Bates and Poole (2003) have “blog” as a separate indexed item, or even listed as “web log,” in the back of the book.


Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance Education: A Systems View. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Pang, L. (2009). Application of blogs to support reflective learning journals. Retrieved from http://deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/teaching-strategies/application-of-blogs.html