Graham’s post about e-portfolios for teachers kicked off this rumination. He’s thinking about a research question regarding the sustainability and motivation for teachers to invest their energy into the development of an online presence. Stimulated by this question – I’ve taken it up myself. But not as a research project. Just a thought. What purpose is served by keeping this blog? A little midwinter reflection.
I followed Graham’s link to Hellen Barrett’s site to check whether I even know what an e-portfolio is. Helen Barrett used to be the staff development coordinator for my school district. Small world. I don’t see a simple definition anywhere on her main page. From her FAQ page I learn that a portfolio could be used either for presentation or as a digital archive. As I thought.
More interestingly, I checked Barrett’s Metaphors for Portfolios page. There I learned that portfolios can be compared with mirrors, maps, sonnets, journeys, stories, campfires, toothbrushes (huh?), caterpillars… The digital portfolio itself is a metaphor. Paired with a computer, it’s an e-metaphor, like e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning, and such. It’s an e-archive.
Why bother? Graham’s question again. I didn’t have much of a purpose when I started here. Over time, themes developed as I began to reflect more on my thinking about teaching, and the other blogs I read. I began to recognize some value in keeping track of my intellectual rambles, if only to note a sense of growth or change. But the public nature of the process allows others to contribute and add substance to the stew. Maybe a stewpot would be a good metaphor for those who enjoy cooking?
Rather than cooking something, I see this as an intellectual history made public. It’s an undisciplined journey marked by a trail of bread crumbs, navigational aids famously used by Hansel and Gretel in their futile bid to find their way out of the forest. The value in keeping track is essentially one of noting trends and patterns, differences and inconsistencies, improvements and degradations. These notes and links are reference points. It’s a rough self assessment tool, not a formal inquiry. The bits and pieces don’t exactly line up or point the way to anywhere, and they merely suggest possibilities for action.
Still stumbling on the ‘why‘ question. But this is where the magic kicks in. Process and product are joined here. The unquantifiable attains value. How small we’d be if every significant thing about us could be counted! My purpose here is to document a journey through a maze of ideas. It’s an unpacking, an extended exploration of disorder and contradiction. When I sit down to write, I don’t ever quite know what to expect. That’s my reason. No path.
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You never fail to make me think more deeply about my writing – whether on my personal blog of meandering thoughts or my professional blogs of technology instruction and organizational collaboration. All of that writing comes from my desire to express myself in some creative manner. And often I just let it come out without much thought. But your writings always make me stop and think about what I do, why I do it, and how can I do it better. And even…should I continue to do it at all. Thank you for making me think!
I’ve been asking myself the same “Why bother?” question, and I think I’d answer it the same way for myself as I answer it for my students. Do I value thoughtfulness? (Yes.) Would I like to think of myself, or be described by others, as a thoughtful person, or a thoughtless person? (Easy choice.) It’s true that in some mechanical sense we’re all thinking all the time, but in my experience, as a writer and as a teacher, the act of writing gives shape to thought, helps to generate thought (that “extended exploration of disorder and contradiction” sounds about right), and allows me to have, once the first thoughts are down on paper, second thoughts: elaborations, further questions, shifts in point of view. Thinking well isn’t something that Just Happens. Thinking well is a discipline which can be improved, like any other skill-based discipline, with practice and attention to process. That’s one answer to the sustainability question. I’ve taught, and written, for a long time now. For the first ten or twenty years I was good when I was good and I was bad when I wasn’t, and I didn’t have a lot of control over the highs and lows. The quality of my teaching, and my writing, wasn’t, for me at that time, sustainable. When I decided to monitor the processes I was in by writing about them—keeping a teaching journal—I got better.
I’ve kept thatjournal for years; I’ve only been blogging for a couple of months. But what I see as one truly significant difference is the (at least implied, and often actual) presence of an audience out there who share my commitment to the use of words as vehicles of thought. The presence of other thoughtful bloggers, like Doug and Graham and Em, makes it easier for me to feel like I am not simply tilting at my own private windmills, but that I am engaged in a larger conversation which has a point and a direction, if not, as Doug suggests, a destination.
Another angle about the sustainability of blogging is that there really is a difference in feel. The templates that are available to bloggers are attractive; given some minimal sense of design, you can make your work look good. And the automatic archiving features offered by most blog engines make it possible to begin to shape a body of work that feels less like a notebook and more like a set of coherent explorations. So that’s both an incentive and an organizational tool, both of which support the sustainability of the enterprise.
I started blogging because I wanted to see what it would feel like on the inside before I asked my students to create their own blogging communities. I get a new set of high school sophomores at the semester break, in two weeks, and I’m pretty excited about trying to recreate in microcosm what I have been able to experience in the larger blogging community over the last few months.
I’d like to echo Em’s comment above. It was, and is, enormously encouraging to me to find Borderland and say, okay, yes, this is the kind of thing I would hope to be able to do. It’s a quality enterprise in every respect, and an inspiration. Thanks.
It’s good to hear that something I’ve written triggered a thought somewhere else; not so good to know that anyone would consider not-writing. EM, I read through your posts on blogging, and you seem to be finding the practice useful. Stay with it. You’re doing good work. Bruce, I’ve kept a teaching journal (notebook) on and off. Never sustained. Seeing the ideas that other people value, either in their own blogs or in comments on what I’ve put here makes this more interesting. Thanks.
There are those that do and those that explain.
One of the other unique qualities of blogging is when a post from somewhere on your network triggers something worth exploring in your brain. It doesn’t even have to directly relate to the topic of the post, but the next thing it has triggered a string of thoughts that open up new perspective. And that new perspective may never have been opened up without someone else’s question, issues or ideas. Glad my question was able to do that for you. Now I have to get back to addressing Stephen’s questions!
A toothbrush is a small, but important tool used to maintain other more important (quality of life) tools.
A bit of a subject hijack here, but I just wanted to say: Happy New Year to you and yours. I wish you all the best for 2007.
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[...] Stephen Downes challenges me straight out of the blocks with some telling questions of his own. I’ll try answering them shortly. Nancy McKeand gave me a great personal anecdote that empathised with my point of view but I found her more indepth reflections on the question over on her blog. She also refined my question and asked another of her own. I’ll have a go at those as well. Joost Robben suggests a focus on pedagogy, as opposed to technology and Doug Noon also links over to his take and offers some suggestions on how to obtain some varied answers. Franki offers a short personal answer and some encouragement while Sarah Puglisi’s reflective answer (worthy of a blog post on its own) also offers her perspective in answering my question as it stands. This is my favourite part of her response: I think teachers develop on-line work for a variety of reasons, and the why do it question is that self check, that arrival of the cold morning after the night of enjoying the rush of creating. It’s the duality of all things we do. I frankly will answer you as I would to kids. I think it’s better to be a maker than to be a critic or deconstructor. I truely think this is what at heart gives me the energy to go ahead and learn more, create a blog, read, explore, process and find meaning in this form. [...]
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