Creating And Engaging In Multitudes Of Dialogue

My stats for this blog at the most recent check.

It may only be 1000 views, a tiny number in typical blogging stats, but it still feels like a small milestone for me and this blog.

When I'm reading other people's blogs I'm often left feeling inferior, in my ability to organise my thoughts into words, sentences and paragraphs. They are often very well-constructed, insightful and original. I'm not the best editor of my own writing (let alone my thoughts) and I'm not professing to have brand-new ideas or thoughts, but this has been an interesting project for me so far and seeing that I have 1000 views is encouraging to know that somebody is reading my posts somewhere.

Here at ISB, we've been trying to host fairly regular 'Tech Tank' meetings, in which a group of faculty who are interested in blogging, social-networking, integration of tech in our teaching and personal development, get together over some nibbles and drinks and discuss what we've learned or tried or struggled with recently in regards to those topics.

When we get onto the subject of blogging there often tends to be feelings of fear or disinterest from some of the people at the group. And I admit to feeling my own fears in regards to blogging sometimes too. One of those concerns that's brought up is 'Who are my audience? I don't know who would want to read this? Should I have a specific audience I'm writing for?'

I'm discovering more about the answers to these questions as I go and although I think it's fine to write for a specific selective audience, I also feel like it's OK to be a bit more general throughout your blog. There are some audiences I have in mind when I'm writing my posts and a particular post might be more interesting to a certain group, but I hope that in general my blog might be read by a wide-range of people and that it may open up/continue dialogues about a range of topics.

I would like to think that at least one of those views is a colleague at ISB, so that they can know where I am in my head and my teaching.
That at least one is a parent of a student at ISB, so they can know the kinds of things I am interested in as a teacher.
That at least one is a student, so that they can know I exist beyond just being a teacher. That I have other thoughts/interested and that I'm learning too.
That at least one is someone who is not related to ISB or teaching at all, so that they may get a small insight in to education/drama/me.

Blogging, to me, is another way that I can express myself and also a way of creating and engaging in dialogues, with all of the different communities to which I belong: ISB, education, theatre, global and so on. I contain multitudes in my self, in my art, in my teaching and so I should contain multitudes in my blog.

So to encourage further dialogue, if you're reading this blog, I'd love to know who you are and what you think about this or any other post of mine...