Blog vs. Discussion Board

Stephen Downes pointed out a great article on the use of educational blogging.  I highly recommend the read, especially if, like me, you’re still wondering about exactly where blogging fits in the practical instructional landscape.

As I pointed out in my first couple of posts, I’ve been kind of hesitant to really embrace blogging.  Not that I think it’s “BAD” or that I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I’m not really seeing that it’s “all-that-and-a-can-of-Cheez-Whiz-too” like like I’ve heard others [the general media?] proclaim it to be.  I do see it as a great way to “be heard” (at least I visualize people are listening) and the entry curve is next to zero but I’ve certainly had stronger and much more meaningful interactions in other modalities (a better term escapes me at the minute) such as online chat, via email and on Discussion Boards.  Again, I haven’t found blogging to be bad or even a waste of time but I also haven’t seen the interaction and two way communication that I, personally, think is so necessary to a good instructional experience (this is not intended as a slight to the generosity of nklkenny in posting a couple of comments).  My experience, thus far, has been that blogging is a very blogger-centric way to communicate where the blogger puts stuff out there – pretty free form – and any comments or discussion around that thought aren’t really facilitated very well.  Certainly, as far as a dialogue goes, blogging just isn’t there. 

That’s great, Paul, but where are you going with this?  Well, on Threaded Discussion Boards, I’ve seen raging dialogue take place.  They just feel much more, uh, community-oriented (not the right term but I can’t think of a better description right now).  While reading the article above, and I don’t necessarily diagree with them, I feel that maybe we are looking past existing technology and trying to force new, shiny, technology into roles it wasn’t intended to fill.  Of course, it could be that I’m still so new to blogging that I haven’t seen the big picture yet… 

So, I’ve thrown this idea out there because it’s on my mind and given you some additional information on what I’m thinking and provided some fodder in the form of an article… let’s have a discussion about it… (yes, you could consider that kind of like a double-dog dare )