Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Irish Blog Awards (#iba11) - Why Blog in the First Place?

This Blog has been nominated for the 2011 Irish Blog Awards - many thanks to the folks who nominated the blog, much appreciated (I know who you are!). 

Graphic from www.awards.ie.
I have been nominated in the Best Personal Blog - there are 97 Blogs nominated in this category - including the brilliant TwentyMajor and the fantastically named Ouch My Fanny Hurts! This will be a tough category in which to even get shortlisted - never mind winning. Check out all the blogs at the Nominations page - some great stuff.

I was reading Professor Steve Wheeler of the University of Plymouth (@timbuckteeth on Twitter) who was writing about blogging in his Learning with 'e's Blog. In his post The truth about blogging - he gives several reasons for blogging. Wheeler tells us "To blog is to teach yourself what you think". As an educator myself, I was particularly in agreement with his statement "Blogging in effect, can contribute to an endless cycle of learning through content creation, feedback, reflection and refinement of thinking. It is this kind of critical reflection cycle that can build excellent, creative, flexible and responsive educators". I learn a lot from doing this, and for me Wheeler hits the nail on the head with his arguments. While I am writing down my own personal thoughts and opinions - I am mindful that I am also writing for an audience. This means that I check sources, spelingg, grammar, use quotes, and more recently - acknowledging in captions the owners of graphics and other material that I use. 

Blogging takes a lot of time - since this time last year I have written 227 posts. Most days I write something - usually in the evening. Sometimes I publish straight away, other posts take me several days to write. Quite often I am stuck for something to write about - when this happens I just go on-line and find lots of interesting material from the news sites on which I can comment. I have no central theme to my blog - other than that I think out loud. I write about my family, education, travel, reviews, politics, Preston North End - anything that gets me thinking. Sometimes I even bitch and moan.

While I am thinking my fingers move over the keyboard and "Hey Presto" - I have a new post.

Long live blogging and the Irish Blog Awards.

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