The Question Should be: Why Are You *Not* Blogging

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by writer; gives himself credit to modify!

 …agreed, even if I am behind on blogging on primary blogs (e.g. Mountair Arts, Poets & Writers Picnic and New Faculty Majority), there are the other ones. Starting a new blog is one way of avoiding "blog torment," although perhaps not the best one. That topic and blogging resistance dominate comments. The conversation this post generates is another plus. 

A final comment reminds us that, ultimately, we blog for ourselves. 

Alan Levine opens,

I don’t really have to explain why I blog. Actually I am compelled to. I cannot stand to NOT blog. It’s easy, and as I said in my first post, April 19, 2003, on a them self hosted MovableType blog- I Blog Therefore I Am.

It is for me, primarily, how I think through ideas, issues, and stuff that makes me want to puke. It is as much a part of my cognitive process.

In last week’s pre class discussion for the Program for Online Teaching Certificate Class I kind of jumped on someone in the chat who said “I do not have time to blog”. I was probably kind of rude, but I refuse to buy that as an excuse. It’s a copout.

 Read the rest at The Question Should be: Why Are You *Not* Blogging - CogDogBlog

Revision is NOT editing: Revision IS writing

… good piece on revision from Brave Writer, a new found writing source thanks to Lee Bessette dta @readywriting. Although primarily for homeschooling families, Brave Writer looks to be an equally useful resource for anyone teaching writing, tutoring or working independently to improve their own writing. Tag and file this under DIY PD  and #GetSmarter.

Revision is “casting new vision” for the original piece of writing. It’s a “re-imagining” of the original content. You have what you want to say, now you are considering all the various ways it can be said.

Your freewrite/draft is the jet stream of thought. It’s all of it rushing out of the writer onto the page willy-nilly.

Revision is not, now, taking that freewrite/draft and fixing commas or identifying run-on sentences. It’s not addressing tone or spelling mistakes. Those practices fall under the category of “copy-editing.”

Revision is that drastic over-haul type work that literally changes the draft sometimes so completely, the original is hardly recognizable in it any more (except maybe some sentences or the germ of the idea). Revision is where you hunker down and look at specific thoughts expressed insufficiently in the draft, and then determine how to expand them, how to enhance them, how to deepen the content or insight or facts-basis.

Revision is not editing « A Brave Writer’s Life in Brief

Words, words, words

…(10 short talks curated by TED) As Wittgenstein famously wrote, "The limits of my language means the limits of my world." Watch talks by linguists, data analysts and word nerds who explore the all-encompassing power of language.

Go Galactic: An Ultimate #clmooc Make?

…When G+ is not cooperating and, after two days disconnected, you are still behind on just getting through inbox and feed reader, don't just reflect. Think BIG. What songs, images or other artifacts (makes?) would you have put on Voyager's Golden Record? Imagine tasting sound! Not fattening, I hope. What about senses we can't imagine? How would we communicate without shared senses? 

Credo = Go Galactic: make to communicate and connect with whom /what /when /wherever, under any conditions, even ones you can't even imagine? Did I say, "think big"? Take a kid, a poet or both along to help.)

blogging to map virtual learning walks

…rounding up several to connect through shared practices, words, writing and the central word cloud (found, hacked to remix here as 4-way bridge connecting three separate blogs (none registered with #clmooc), with Making Connected Learning in the lower right quadrant. Going counter-clockwise from there: Poets and Writers Picnic, the New Faculty Majority blog and Mountainair Arts (a community blog but not the only one).

I wrote one reflection today for another blog, intended to write three but didn't make it. The rest, including the one I would have included here, will have to wait.