H809-11. Unexpected feedback

I was stunned to receive some wonderful feedback about my blog from a student in one of the other tutor groups to which I occasionally contribute. To be honest, I am slightly uneasy about this particular blogging endeavour, the reason being that I am writing for an unknown audience. Normally I blog for myself, for a few selected readers, or with my students on our class blog. On the one hand, I want to be myself and express my views as freely as I am ordinarily accustomed to doing, and on the other hand, I am sensitive about causing offence or being misunderstood, or even seeming less than certain (I am a teacher, so I am not used to this role).

This tension is actually very interesting, now that I think about it. I am seeing it more from my students' point of view now (especially from the point of view of the 'complainers'.) I think it is actually very difficult to be 'reflective' on a blog. First of all, reflections are private. Secondly, at least to my mind, they come in fragmentary form. I often note down points on paper that I am having difficulty articulating, and so it certainly doesn't make sense to type them up in a blog post for unknown persons to read. I'm not sure I will make reflection a learning goal the next time I use the blog. And blog posts seem to demand their own internal coherence and structure, a sense of completion, whereas I like to draft and revise and leave things in fragmentary form until I feel ready to return to them. So I think these processes and the expected product are quite contradictory. Reflections involve a serious temporal aspect, whereas one is expected to type in the here and now into the little white box.

Sometimes, though, the ideas just flow, and then I can open up the box and just type away. I think this is when the blog comes into its own. But there is no way to predict when this will happpen...