Kevin and I started a blog when we moved to India to stay connected with our friends and family and keep them up to date on our many adventures. While we did a good job for the first year or so on keeping it up to date, it soon became a choir that neither of us looked forward to after returning from vacation. I think in particular, I don't like blogging because I'm not confident in my ability to write for an audience.
I've also recently started this blog as a journal and reflection I've been doing in my graduate course work. This is a completely different sort of blog than our personal blog, although I still find it difficult to write here.
The interesting thing to me is regardless of how I feel about writing blogs, there are so many different uses and purposes of blogs. Blogging is a great way to create conversations, share ideas or just connect to others.
I also think it can be a great tool for student writing. Although I don't always enjoying writing for an audience, I think if students begin blogging in school as part of their language arts and other classes, it can become more natural for them to share their writing. I also think that when we write online, where there is an audience, we tend to put a different kind of effort into it. It's more important for it to be correct when more than one person sees it and it will always be out there. This is a great lesson for kids to learn early.