No, it’s not an involuntary duplicate. In this learning blog, I set out to discuss the concept and practice of learning blog, despite the fact that I have never written a learning blog (or any regular blog for that matter) before. How pretentious and ‘meta’ of me, I know – and what an obnoxious start! (am I allowed to add a smiley in a learning blog? not sure)

It is possible that this exercise will be pure sophistry, but at the outset I have some hope that I will become gradually more interested in the learning blog form, as something fruitful in a teaching / learning environment, and perhaps in other contexts too. At the moment, my interest in the learning blog mostly derives from being titillated by a tension I find in the very concept of learning blog. The idea sounds to me like a mix of a public blog and a ‘learning diary’ – the latter of which I have often used, both as an assignment for students in my teacher role and as a participating student in higher education pedagogical courses.

Here is the tension I find at face value: while a public blog is presumably supposed to be something original, meant to express a singular voice that might deliver some value to an audience, a learning diary on the other hand would seem to be all about supporting the learning of the writer, and only that. The value in combining these two logics is not obvious to me at first sight. The thinking in terms of an audience might come in the way of reflecting for oneself. And perhaps this first miserable attempt at writing a learning blog entry is a case in point: I am devoting too much effort to engaging the reader in a rather foolish manner and not enough effort to studying what the idea behind a learning blog is.

When it comes to the future of this blog, will I be incorrigibly lazy and not dig deeper, or will I find unsuspected resources and deliver immensely insightful takeaways about learning blogs for millions of captivated readers? More likely closer to the former, and that is why I will set up a practice that will make this learning blog developmental. What I now commit to do is that in the end of each blog entry, I will make explicit my commitment to study something more deeply for the next blog entry.

My first commitment is: I will read 5 academic articles that describe and explain the value of learning blogs, and share my thoughts on them next time. Stay tuned dear imaginary reader!