Final Blog Post?

This is my final blog post under the deadline for the OMDE 603 course, but I don’t think it will be my final blog post.  For me, the greatest utility of this process is that I can give thought to what I am learning in real time and there are no limits to how much I can write, as there is with Twitter.  I really like that I can link articles that are interesting and organize my thoughts about what is useful or important, or just wrong, about the article right below.  Later, if I want to see how my thinking evolved on a topic, I can easily do so, even searching my own blog for keywords.

In the future, I can see creating a separate blog on general topics of interest to me, even if it isn’t public.  However, there is a benefit to it being public.  Others can add to your knowledge through their comments or suggested links – it becomes similar to a social constructivist learning approach.  On the other hand, perhaps I wouldn’t be as forthcoming in my ideas on a topic if it were public, or maybe I’ll write something that is misunderstood or taken out of context that creates an online firestorm.  So there are benefits and concerns for both methods.  Another general concern with the blog and linking to articles is the constant evolution of the web that may make the links invalid over time.  It would be nice to have the articles archived for the time the blog is active – more like an online notebook, like Evernote.

Overall, the blogging experiment has been a good learning process that I can see greater benefits than any potential downside.  Here’s hoping that this is a habit that I can keep up with in the future!

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