Having recently been involved in a series of training sessions and University lecturing around Personal Development I find myself constantly referring to reflective practice, Learning Logs and blogging. As this was the case, it seemed sensible to share what I have been saying here in my own blog.
But hey, is this a weblog, k-log or a learning log?
David Gurteen, a lovely man and a wonderful source of knowledge about almost everything describes weblogs as a
“..an informal personal journal that is published publicly on the web. It is updated frequently - often several times a day or at the very least several times a week. At its simplest a blog consists of a number of entries or items. Each item has a title, a short description, a URL, the name of the author and the posted date. More sophisticated blogs can contain further information such as categories or multiple links”.Another definition comes from Wikipedia and of course there are variations on a theme.
There are Knowledge Logs or K-Logs: which is blogging to record one's knowledge about work issues, this can also be used as a reflective practice vehicle instead of a paper-bound ring binder file
There are also Learning Logs – which are not necessarily online unless you adapt the format and add this to your k-log. Have a look at how Andrew Gibbons describes his approach to learning logs http://www.andrewgibbons.co.uk/documents/50tips2.doc he also offers a simple yet reasonably sufficient format http://www.andrewgibbons.co.uk/documents/logsheet2.doc
There are News Logs - these could be an information blog (online), the purpose of which is to comment on and point to web resources on a specific topic or relevant news entries pertaining to a particular site or subject. Some sites have built in functions that allow readers to post directly such as they do on Wikipedia or through an intermediary source that acts as part of an authoring process to validate the news item before it is uploaded onto the News Log.
And I am sure there are plenty more... The key point is documenting in some way, shape or form, things that you want to be reminded of for future development, or reference or to share with others.
I shall leave the last word to David who so clearly outlines how you should feel about your blogging activities.
- Own it and take pride in it
- Use it as a record of your thoughts and ideas
- Create a learning journal
- Let it be very personal - an extention to your own voice
- Write primarily for yourself
- There is no pressure to publish, comment or reply
- Make it open and dynamic
- Create the feeling of having a 'conversation' not one of 'publishing'
If David and others are right, then blogging is soon going to be bigger than e-mail and such rapid growth and development in this field of communication will undoutbtedly change the web presence but also organisational life. Happy blogging.
Józefa
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