Starting a blog requires the change of old habits, making way for a new practice, and an addition to old routines.  As a lifelong learner, I enjoy this opportunity for a mental retrofit; as a sometimes writer, I particularly enjoy the nudge to write more.  As a "digital immigrant," I feel the awkwardness of this new medium.  I still keep a handwritten journal that I can curl up with in some cozy soft spot when night and stillness have finally descended on the household.  I enjoy that in-between bardo space of reverie that Gaston Bachelard writes about  (Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language and the Cosmos) when I am first sorting out what I think and what I see through the writing lens, before I share it with the world.  When do students in the classroom get this kind of space to dream, to reflect and to then determine what is worth pursuing and turning into a form of writing to share?  As a mother, I haven't seen nearly enough of this.

Watching Frontline's Digital Nation (thank you, Ken, for assigning us this to view), I am both troubled and intrigued by the challenges and opportunities of the digital life.  (Well, I am actually deeply troubled but refusing to say the sky is falling and always hoping that with the right educational pathway our youth can rise above the addictive nature of electronics.)   As I hear the reports of researchers who have found the negative impact of multi-tasking our way through the day with multiple electronic devices, I feel how much of an immigrant I am to this new way of writing.  Aren't my entries supposed to be brief and catchy?  Do I have the right tone?  Are my sentences too long?  Some of our assigned reading on blog-writing addresses these questions of best-blog-writing practice I know--but how does it apply to me, my writing habits, the creation of my "blog identity" and "blog voice?  And I ask you out there in my class who are educators, (how) is this taught in the classroom?  Are students now learning several ways of writing--including one for the internet interface and one for the academic assignment?