Thoughts on Blogging

Below is the post that I placed on the Ning I am a part of. This is my response to the questions I posted in my last blog. 



The majority of my life, I have been a numbers guy. I was always very good at math, and ended up majoring in math. My family, however, is full of people who are excellent writers. In High School, I noticed that my siblings have inherited an innate ability to transfer information through stories. They use metaphors and symbols that paint clear pictures of the ideas they wish to communicate. I also noticed, that my writing looked more like a mathematical proof. I had a conclusion I wished to reach; I labeled this as point B. I needed to begin somewhere, so I would work in logical reverse until I came to point A. I then sat down at a computer, typed from point A to point B, hit command+S, printed, and turned in my paper. I didn’t read or edit my first draft, because when I tried, I was bored, and impatient with my inability. In college I was a math major, but was still forced to take several classes with a writing component. My professors returned my papers with a lot of “suggestions”. I read this conglomerate of helpful remarks as confirmation that I had chosen the correct major. I did, however, begin to proofread and edit my papers. However, a few years into college, I gave my life to God, and this changed a lot of things. I started to be interested in just about everything in life. I started trying to learn languages, instruments, cooking, different sports, dancing, and even writing. I started to write poetry, songs, and stories. They weren’t great, but I started to enjoy it.
I gave you the brief introduction to the writing life of Jeremy Duncan to preface my perspective on blogging. I started a blog last year because of my interest in technology. I kept this blog private. I used it as a personal online journal. Even then, I wrote in it rarely. One day, I wrote a blog about my frustrations with electronic communication and online social networking. I decided to share this with the rest of my family, and instead of e-mailing I created a public blog. I enjoyed sharing my thoughts and getting feedback. One of my sarcastic family members commented, "I'm so glad you started this blog! Now I don't have to come talk to you anymore to know what is going on in your life". She was saying that in jest, but it still made me think. Why should I blog? Why not just tell them when I see them? Why would I spend an hour writing something that I could tell everyone in 15 minutes if we were together? If we aren't together, and I wouldn't tell them, why do they need to know? I am still thinking through these questions.
I will probably never meet most of the people whose blogs I read, but I have certainly learned from their thoughts. I have become a better math teacher because Dan Meyer blogs. I have found many different technological tools that are exciting and useful. I have learned about life from John Piper, Matt Chandler, and Matt Carter, who are pastors in Minnesota, Dallas, and Austin. If I am going to learn from all of these people, shouldn't I contribute something also? I have also seen how useful blogs can be. Susan Davis has done some really good things here at Chinquapin with blogging, glogging, vokis, voicethreads, etc... I can see that they are valuable tools for teaching, but I still haven't found a good way to implement them in the math classroom (I have used videos, wikis, online quizzes, etc., but never blogs).
I have read many blogs that were useful and others that weren't. I have wasted a lot of time reading blogs that weren't helpful. Recently, I read an article by David Warlick, posted by Cary Harrod in the "Lurking Cave" forum on the Ning. He explained that, "one thing that’s concerned me is that as we talk about limitless bandwidth, limitless channels on the TV, limitless this and that in the world of information, what is not limitless is attention". This statement was the essence of my first public blog post, but I said it in a much less effective way. I was ranting about something that frustrated me, rather than discussing a problem I had noticed. After reading the “Put forth our best writing selves” article, I decided to delete my first-ever public blog post. I still agree with everything I said, but I realized I was guilty of something that I really dislike; I was "preaching to the choir". The article was not written to persuade, it was written to complain. I will probably rewrite the post in the future, but this time I will be much more careful HOW I say it. The problem is, that takes time. See I can type a lot of junk very quickly, but writing something that is meaningful and effective, that's another story.
This response has taken me well over two hours to put together. I pasted it into GoogleDocs to check for spelling errors after I typed the word, "innate" in the first paragraph (the double-n didn't look right, but it was). I looked up the words, "conglomerate" and "preface" to make sure that I was using them correctly when I was proofreading. I am still unsure if it is correct to place the period/question mark/exclamation point before or after I close a quote. All of these factors keep me from posting to my blog and forums on the Ning. I am less concerned with my grammatical inadequacies being exposed as I am with the amount of time it takes to write something that is useful. I am working on the ability to write out my thoughts when I wish to challenge a statement in a beneficial way. In addition to those concerns, I also don't know WHO to write for. I haven't shared the blog that I made public on this Ning for several reasons. I knew that the blog post that I titled "Web 2.0 and Social Networking" was not written with any audience in mind, but was merely personal ranting. I have only written two other blogs, one of them about tipping in restaurants, and one about getting backed up in my grading. Should I create different blogs for different topics? For example, Dan Meyer has a blog about math that is very helpful. But I started following him on twitter where he tweeted his opinions on "Transformers 2", where he was going that day, etc... I didn't really care about these things. So I don't want to blog/tweet things that don't matter to my audience. For example, I tweet Bible verses that stand out to me in the morning, with a question to challenge others to think about the message. This is fine for other people who are interested in the Bible, but if I shared my twitter address with people on the Ning, it doesn't seem appropriate to tweet a daily Bible verse. It would probably be received as spam. So this brings me to my unanswered questions.

Should I create different blogs/twitter accounts for different audiences?

How do I find the time to blog when I have so many other things vying for my attention?

Is blogging in the math classroom the best way to learn or share learning? And If so, how could I use student blogging to teach math? (I plan to check out the blogs that Dolores posted, because Physics is similar to math, but it might be a while before I have time)

Blogging

Hello guys, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking a few minutes to answer these questions for me.

What is blogging? Do you blog? If so, why do you blog? If not, why don't you blog? How could blogging transform writing in the 21st century?

These questions were posed on a forum in a group that I'm a part of for professional development.
Let me know what you think.

J. Duncan