Continuing the journey . . . I can blog now!

My favourite quote is an ancient Chinese proverb; "knowledge is a gift which will follow its owner everywhere".  Nothing we learn is ever a waste of time, but rather enriches the person that we will ultimately become at our journey's end; that person who is the culmination of all our learnings along life's path.  The value of some lessons we learn is not always as apparent as the value of others, however they all contribute towards us becoming the people we are at any given time. 

Started as a scaffolded learning task for my graduate studies program, this blog is a forum for the examination of some of those lessons I find myself learning over the foreseeable future.  You are welcome to read my postings as well as offer your own insights and comments.

My initial reaction to this task is one of enthusiasm.  Everyone blogs these days . . . except me it appears (and possibly some of my ICT peers).  I have friends and colleagues who blog, and I have always been dazzled by their ability to perform such a thing!  Very much a digital immigrant, the idea of my grasping how one goes about setting up such a thing as a blog has always been one of those things on my bucket list, but further towards the bottom next to the 'too hard basket'.

Thanks to this first task of my GD, that of creating your very own blog, I am now a member of the ether-world!  My pride in myself is only negated by the fact that, when it comes down to it, setting up a blog is really a very easy thing to do.  How many times do we find this out in life though?  That something that we have been avoiding or putting off because of its seeming insurmountability, when finally tackled is really more of a mole-hill than that mountain you had been strapping on your climbing gear in preparation to deal with.

But does the relative ease of an accomplishment make it any less important?  I may not understand the invisible coding which constructs the blog, or understand how the templates are set up, but I do understand that by using the constructs that have been provided for me by someone else who does understand these things, I now have access to a tool the benefits of which I am only starting to experience for myself now.

For a visual learner such as myself this was an ideal way to introduce me to a concept that I had virtually already convinced myself of being unable to complete.  Yes, this exercise was based on the learning theory of behaviourism, meaning that I have only produced an end goal by following a set of step-by-step set of instructions requiring no understanding of processes outside of those instructions.  However I can envisage the way in which this tool can fit into a constructivist learning framework as an example of how we can have access to information and tasks that we don’t know even if we ourselves don’t possess that knowledge initially.

So, is my blog achievement worth (small) celebration?  Yes it is.  I have learned something new, and this can only enrich my overall learning experience.