Blogging for learning

I have just come across this blog - http://blog.mathemagenic.com/ - which is a wonderful 'thinking aloud' blog of a PhD student who has just about completed her dissertation on blogging.

This seems to me to be a wonderful example of how to use technology to share your thought processes, learn from others and make sense of a multitude (even jumble) of ideas. But it does bring up, once again, the question of audience. Does a reflective writer need an audience? How will the audience affect the writing?

Jenny Moon has an interesting section in her Learning Journals book, where she quotes what various writers have said about the relationship between reflective writing and an audience (p.99).

Holly (1991) has written that she can speak more clearly when writing for others. (Holly, M., 1991, Keeping a Personal-Professional Journal, Geelong, Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press)

Is this why blogging is so popular? The very act of blogging and making a connection with others will help to clarify thinking? George Siemens has said that all learning starts with a connection, either conceptual, social or neuronal and that we need to externalise to make sense.

But Elbow and Clarke (1987 : 19) have written:

'An audience is a field of force. The closer we come, the more we think about these readers - the stronger the pull they exert over the contents of our minds.'

(Elbow, P. & Clarke, J., 1987, Desert island discourse: the benefits of ignoring audience. in T. Fulwiler (ed.) The Journal Book, Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann

Does this suggest that by making our reflections more open and writing for an audience, we risk losing our ability to be true to our individual thinking?

Jenny Moon suggests that the audience can be the self - and that then we would have to decide which self - the one now or the one in the future?

I have tried both private and public blogging and I find private blogging harder to sustain. For me private blogging is only useful for thoughts that I would not share with others, but somehow feel the need to 'mark' /record. My private blogs are more like diaries - a record of events and feelings. I find I need others for sense-making and learning, but that I also like to do this very much at my own pace. This is where public blogging can be helpful.

Source of image: http://rarelizzie.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/fp-jumble.jpg