BLOGS = DONUTS?

Sorry, I wanted a tantalizing post title to get your attention. I have a theory that everyone, including you, has a specific donut that resonates with your DNA. It will call to you like a siren. You can't resist it--there's no use even trying. It might even change from month to month.

Now, how many calories is it going to take you to find it?

This post is really about the educational uses of blogs. Hopefully this doesn't come across as the laziest fulfillment of an assignment ever attempted by mankind. The assignment was to find a specific "article" about the educational uses of blogs and to discuss its (the article's) interest to me as well as expansions or improvements on it.

Honestly, one of the best resources I found was Kimberly McCollum's blog post spawned from the same assignment. Let's be honest, she did her homework.

Really though, I found the article (post) great for two reasons:

1. It's concise. It doesn't make my eyes tired thinking about how much I'm going to have to skim (notice I didn't say "read") to get information
   
   
2. It's a starting point. The post gives an overview of what I'd want to know about the educational uses of blogs by giving an overview and pointing me in possible directions.
   

Heck, if Kimberly's post were hosted on Blogger, it may have even climbed to the top of Google's search for the keywords "educational uses of blogs." Maybe my linking to her post will be the catalyst that propels her to the top and results in litters of comments to such a number that she won't be able to respond and continue her normal life.

Back to the assignment--my only expansion on this topic is due to the tendency I have to use loose definitions. First, if we're talking about education, I like to include self learning. I'm a huge fan of self learning, not only because it's how I've built my trade but also it's so reflective of the kind of person I am. Self learning, combined with a loose definition of "blogs," is the essence of how I educate myself in my work. I independently and randomly search others' work, learn from it, internalize it, sometimes expand on it, and apply it. My self learning is almost completely dependent on using blogs as starting points.

So when we talk about the "educational" uses of blogs, it might be useful to expand the definition of "educational" beyond a classroom or teacher-centered setting. I really liked the part in Kimberly's article that talked about the benefits of "reflective practice."

I feel like I might be thinking in circles, too. The assignment to search out an article (isn't that really a blog, although sometimes more static?) about educational uses of blogs followed by blogging about that article seems a little like asking someone to use a word processor to type a report about a document that explores the benefits of word processing.

Maybe I should stop writing posts after 10:00.