Blogging can aid learners to engage in more systematic self-regulated lifelong within a third space, or middle-space, between formal learning at school or at work, and informal learning occurring during play or while participating in hobbies, interests or in community events.

Blogging for learning involves an ongoing cyclical process of meaning-making in which the student participates in a series of conversations while engaged in collection, sorting, filtering, drafting and revision following formative feedback involving expert-novice interactions, peer-to-peer interactions, and self-reflective interactions.

Blogging cannot be separated from the additional tools it uses on the web and off. Blogging for me extends beyond the virtual pages of single posts. Blogging is not just the technology – which is constantly changing - but a tapestry of shifting dialogues that individual bloggers engage in with themselves, peers, experts, and  with their own and others’ artifacts.

What has attracted me to blogging is that it is a personal tool that serves as my own central hub for collecting together and documenting over time all my various disconnected artifacts of learning: journals, photos, podcasts and video recordings, files of various kinds such as essays, projects, presentations, scanned images, bookmarks, and links to useful resources such as sites and learning communities.

Blogging has served many crucial roles for me this past year. It helped me collect and draft ideas for two academic presentations I gave at two conferences. It enabled me to collect artifacts of learning more systematically and reflect on my learning into an e-portfolio useful for my final presentation to complete my Master’s degree. It served as a means to share my ongoing learning about the use of blogs within an academic blogging circle at AU Landing. It gave me an opportunity to connect with a wide number of other people with diverse interests and specializations. It empowered me to engage in deeper reflection on practice.

Blogging has provided me with an opportunity to practise the use of the other tools. One significant shift of perspective for me is how I now perceive the blogging tool - it cannot be 'blogging for learning" unless one is using the various tools and learning constantly to make fuller use of the tools available.

I use the image of the starfish as a metaphor for explaining this significant point - my entire orientation to blogging for learning changed once I embraced the notion that one can more effectively explore and collect and thrive when one has the adequate tools for learning One of these tools is one's perspective - engaging in a regimen of self-training, trying out the different ways in which you can express yourself, and make yourself more engaged in the learning of others... and by being more engaged with others, and your own role, you grow as a lifelong learner.