Tools for reflective writing

Increasing learner autonomy and increasing familiarity with a wide range of technological tools means that inevitably learners will be using a wide range of tools for reflective writing. What might these tools be?

Pencil/pen and paper will I think continue to be used, although maybe not so much for assessed reflective journal writing - as in the case of students' work. In most cases this would be too time consuming - although art and photography students for example, might still use paper-based sketch books or notebooks and there will be other disciplines where paper will serve the best purpose. And of course - for non assessed journals, many people like the feel of paper - just as they like books - and how a paper journal can be personalised. Jenny Moon in her writing (Learning Journals - A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development, p.138)  has mentioned having a hand made book that is just the right size for her bag, so that she can carry it around with her and make notes as and when appropriate. Chapter 12 in this book is all about examples of journals.

But students and learners in general will increasingly use a whole host of different tools. I myself have three blogs - this one, my Wordpress Jenny Connected blog, and a private blog (Commonplace Thoughts) which I use for very personal reflections. However, I  have found over time that it is very helpful to have an audience for my reflections, even if this sometimes creates  huge feelings of over exposure. I find that my network is able to offer me alternative perspectives that I am not able to see for myself.

As well as blogs I am increasingly seeing learners using e-portfolios, wikis, Youtube, audio files, digital story telling and there are probably more which I am not aware of or have forgotten about in this instance. I have seen instances of people using photography to reflect on personal situations - words are not used at all. I find these fascinating and impressive. Reflection comes in all sorts of guises - not just the written word.

Interestingly - in her Learning Journals book (p.52) - Jenny Moon writes:

'It may surprise some that we do not make the distinction between electronic and paper-based jouranls. At the time of writing this second edition of this book, there are many more electronic journal forms in use (in particular in the context of personal devleopment planning). However, this book concerns the principles behind working on a learning journal and generally these are no different whether the writing (or representation) is on paper, screen or on an audio recorder, etc.'

A year or two ago I might not have questioned this - but recently I have begun to see that there is a strong interplay between the tool that is used and the learning that occurs and I think this has been researched - although I cannot remember where I have read about this, i.e. that the tool has an effect on the learning and the learning has an effect on how the tool is used.

I think it would be worth trying to follow this through a bit further.

Source of image: http://blog.craftzine.com/TopTenTools.jpg