How did I get here?
My primary reason for embarking on this quest to blog is partially to see how my writing would fair to an outside anonymous audience. Will anyone ever read them (besides my tutor)? Can I sustain my posts? These thoughts constantly plague me…
Bloggers blog for many different reasons, some use it to document life, comment and express opinions, think or reflect through writing, let out emotions – treating it as a confessional and therefore therapeutic space, or blog as part of a community or specific group.
My reasons fall somewhere in the middle of ‘commentary’ and ‘muse’ with a sprinkling of ‘documenting life’, thus enabling me to explore, investigate and research areas of Web 2.0 and multimodal communication. This blog allows me to convey my thoughts on and through digital play, which is exactly what I consider blogging and other forms of online social networking to be.
So who am I blogging for?…Anyone who will listen or myself?…perhaps both.
By setting up two separate threads in April this year (2007), I hope to express forms of digital play and reflect on aspects of digital play. The sporadic postings in “Mundane Narratives” are exactly what it says on the tin…mundane!…Entries at the moment which are far from meaty but which convey thoughts to an online community of people I will never really know or meet. These are casual entries where I create and test links or post youtube videos, random things that interest me and possibly others…perhaps…maybe…somewhere…somehow?! The “Reflective Narratives” however are more substantial posts, enabling me at the moment to question, challenge and reflect on the place of blogging and social networking within an educational context.
Since beginning to blog, I feel a part of the 21st century new media generation…although I’m still working out how to build a traditional website! Prior to entering the blog-o-sphere, I brushed aside blogging, myspace and facebook, leaving them to the people who I believed knew what they were doing and could make proper use of them…now I’m one of those people…well nearly! And I can honestly say that I now see the light!
I can see definite benefits in socially interacting online, for one I can see how simple it is to keep in touch with people especially as I have a tendency to not check my emails regularly…which I might add has vastly improved since buying a new computer and finally joining “the broadband massive”. Also I have plans to create something quite exciting with a group of friends…so watch this space.
Writing for a faceless audience is also quite appealing but yet daunting. Expressing opinions and reflecting on learning only to await judgement, criticism, agreement or simply acknowledgment…do I care what others say?…unfortunately I am one of those that do.
At this stage in my blogging experience, I would say that I have reached ‘stage 5’ in Bartlett-Brags blogging process and aim to create more ‘knowledge artefacts’ of, and through, digital play by further exploring areas of Web 2.0, which I hasten to add is viewed by some as in danger of being surpassed by Web 3.0– an area which although remains hazy and vague, is made clearer for me here.
So where do I go from here?
I’d like to think that I’ll maintain and sustain this blog and reflect on different modes of online communication, sites or theories…however I have a hunch, and a sneaky suspicion that one day real life will come back into fashion and reclaim the throne taken over by virtual life… 
*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
