What’s this now, a blog post?! It seems I have been reduced to one lackluster annual post. I do not see this changing anytime soon, at least until I finish my masters. You may recall that two years ago I started my MA in the Athabasca University MAIS program. It’s going well, and I am more or less half way done. I’d love to do it faster, but one course a semester is more than a handful. Actually, I’m sort of taking a second course this semester. It’s called Social Media Tools and Supporting Your Professional Learning, and it’s a non-credit course being offered by the AUGSA. As part of this course I have started Tweeting and now I have to do a blog post! What am I supposed to blog about?

Week 3 Topic:
What do you think the value of opinion-writing or reflective-thought writing may have for your professional learning?

Although I did not realize it at the time, I think that my blogging during my undergrad years was largely beneficial to my overall educational experience. I very rarely blogged about specific topics related to my studies, unless it was complaining about how behind I was on assignments and such. No, for the most part this blog has been about random musings and happenings in my life. Reflective thought, if you will. So, how was this beneficial? I think it provided me with an outlet to sort out the various thoughts floating around in my head, thereby allowing me to focus on the topic at hand when I sat down to write assignments. (Not that it prevented me from procrastinating).

I also feel that blogging improved my overall writing style. I do not claim to have perfect grammar or sentence structure, but allowing myself to differentiate two different writing styles (casual vs. academic) resulted in greater clarity in my academic work. I also think it allowed me to add a bit of personality to my writing both inside and outside of school.

Week 4 Topic:
Blog about your thoughts of how you think blogging could be used to support your own learning in your university courses and possibly even include a recommendation to a blog that you like.

For those not familiar with how classes work at Athabasca University, they are done online with an application called Moodle, which stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Fancy name aside, Moodle is more or less just a message board application. You, your professor, and your fellow students can start and engage in discussions relevant to the course. The course professor sets out the general layout of each course page, usually creating different sections and boards for units in the course. Students respond to the relevant topics, engage in some good discussion, and proceed to do so throughout the course. While this largely works, it lacks a certain personal touch. Sometimes a prof will create an off topic area where students can post about whatever they’d like. This is a good first step, but I think blogging by both the prof and students would be incredibly useful.

Academic blogging, when tied to a course, should be relevant to the course topics, but free from having to address specific queries. I could discuss how I feel about the assigned readings, how the course is relevant to my personal and professional life, or just ruminations about the course as a whole. The difference here is that it would be much more unstructured than the typical discussions that take place in Moodle.

While Moodle does have a blog function, I have never seen a professor or student use it. I don’t think most people know it’s there. Fortunately Athabasca now has something called The Landing (or just Landing, I’m not sure) which can be best described as Facebook for academics. It’s a great tool, but unfortunately very few in the MAIS program use it and those that do are exclusively students. I think there is great potential in the Landing, and I hope to see it gain momentum.

So, I guess now I’m supposed to recommend a blog. As I said earlier, I don’t follow any blogs that are related to my academic pursuits. I prefer the random and obscure. I’ll just leave it at that.