Contemplations on Blogging

Today I started a summer class using Best Practices in Literacy Education with Technology. Our class learned about many different technologies and creating blogs was one of them. This is my final piece of homework tonight: to write a blog post.  This is the hardest part for me to do and it has taken me all night to decide what to write here.  

In her welcome letter, our instructor @rachelvsmall (whom I have been following on Twitter for quite some time and am really excited to be spending the week learning from) has stated that, "Your growth mindset for learning is evident as you've signed up for this course." I like to think that I have a growth mindset, but I do find myself stuck sometimes. Perfect example, this blog and blog post.  

I have only ever dabbled in blogging twice in the past--years apart from each other; once when I was a teacher/librarian in a 6th grade and introduced blogging as a form of writing and reading and last year to chronicle my journey and periodically update friends and relatives after receiving a serious health diagnosis. Both times, I made my blogs private, each for different reasons, but they were private non-the-less.  

This time we have been asked to make our blogs public, therefore making my writing wide open for all the world to see.  It’s kind of scary.  It’s easy to hide behind the veil of privacy, where you know your audience is a specific one and you have control over who sees it.  It’s also easier to monitor what others say and see.  

This makes me even more aware of how important it is for my middle schoolers to understand how everything you say and do online can impact others’ lives, both positively and negatively.

When you make things public, or transparent as the new lingo suggests, it’s scary and as one of my colleagues said today in class (and I’m paraphrasing here), if it’s recorded in some way or written down, then I’m stuck with it and there’s no taking it back.  

So here’s to my new “growth mindset”, my transparent contemplations, and my public life! Blogger, Embrace me, please!?