Retracing a Digital Journey - The Blogibilities of Digital Learning #DLDay #NWP

February 6th, 2013

For the last six years I've used digital spaces to organize my academic, personal, and professional life. I'm using today's post, February 6th, to reflect on the multiple uses blogs have had in my classrooms, in a new career, and within my more creative endeavors. This is how I am celebrating today's events (and I'm using this post to do a workshop with others at Fairfield University).

I became curious of using blogs after I left a high school classroom in 2007 and when my last senior class began to share with me their online writing at their first year of college (e.g., students in 2007). I wanted to know more. At the time I took a course in technology at Syracuse University  with Dr. Jing Lei and started to challenge myself to write about happiness for a year (365 posts). At this time I also began collecting research on blogs. The result of this has been six years of keeping additional blogs for myself on themes: quirkiness, karma, cacophony, Connecticut and, this year, community. It is a way to reflect every night before I go to bed and to maintain a writing life (as supported by the National Writing Project)

While in my doctoral studies I thought to myself, "hmmmm, wouldn't it be interesting to create a  professional portfolio for the job market?" In addition, I continued to learn from students who used blogs to tell their stories in interesting ways - thank you, Ibrahim and Joanne)

This tech-tual lineage led to a curiosity for using blogs to design courses in my  adjunct work and inspired me to start requiring pre-service teachers to use blogs with students. Some of them loved this and others hated it (it remains that way, today).

Now at Fairfield University, I use blogs to manage my courses in both the English Department and Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions. They serve as a hub for the work I do: EN 11, EN 12, EN 373, En 411, ED 369/459, ED 455, ED 561.

Yes, there are multiple possibilities (blogibilities) for using blogs , but for today I will simply leave you with the following,

10 Reasons I Love This Digital Platform:

10. Students continue to teach me (vlogging)

9. I maintain friendship 

8. I read others who are  Taking a political stance

7. It's a space to share  Art

6. It helps students who are Maintaining Professionalism

5. It allows me to See students using them to achieve

4. I can upload  my own digital stories

3. It allows me to keep up with family

2. It allows me to make things happen

1. I can continue to building community

Happy Digital Learning Day, 2013