I have been intensively, and purposely, blogging in an educational setting for about a year now, and have realized that when I first started I was pretty much an autonomous blogger, a learner who blogs for oneself, who can post their own ideas independently, but enjoys touching base with others from time to time if their ideas resonate with mine. I did not much enjoy blogging for grades, but have since adapted the scope of the task to serve my own needs:1. I wanted practice reflecting on my own ideas, and improve my teaching practice.2. I sought to come up with a realistic business plan that would serve my professional interests as a trainer based on my previous experiences using web 2.0 technologies for adult literacy, English as a Second language (ESL), faculty training, and computer literacy.3. I wanted to explore the potential of blogging for myself, and try out different tools such as the bookmarks, RSS feeds, friends list, blogrolls, tags, etc.4. I felt compelled to describe the process I took while immersed in this new learning environment, and report on it from my own perspective.I realized that quite a lot of stuff needed to be kept separate from peers, as these ideas were not up to par with what I considered to be sufficiently useful content to share. I preferred to keep my fuzzy thinking to myself, on my own PC, rather than push it out there for my peers and instructors to see and scrutinize.Eventually, my ideas were mostly written for the express purpose of presenting a snap-shot of my own thinking and the influences on my thinking from other sources. I captured ideas at a particular point in time, creating what George Siemens referred to as a pause-point, and I shifted my emphasis on capturing as much richness and context as possible. Lilia Efimova has a word for this process; she calls this sense-making, and this is a key reason why I have enjoyed blogging so much.In addition to sense-making, the deliberate capture of thoughts in context, I enjoy the act of blogging because it promotes way-making and path-sharing, which I consider an integral process to self-directed learning and self-identity formation. Way-making and path-sharing are processes when learners engage in self-monitoring of past, present and future intentions for online explorations. Reflection on past acts, tied to current actions, tied to future/potential actions. This self-learning strengthens a learner’s motivations to explore web sites, and/or others’ blogs, and record them to share with self/others. The sense-making/way-making/path-sharing process requires an entirely different orientation to learning. It is a mingling of both individualistic and social goals. It is about self-development, yet it also invites comments from others, and invites direction from trusted mentors and experts and learning companions, but is not dependent upon these forms of interaction. For the past year, I have realized that if one wants to blog continuously and consistently, an individual needs to act as an autonomous agent to scout, monitor, gather, integrate and share or store learning resources. The motivations are diverse, and need to be explored by a lifelong blogger: to collect for others, and share in a spirit of reciprocity; to store for one-self just in case it is needed later; to consume and digest for nourishing oneself to serve a specific learning goal, to get the word out there, and comment on a resource to invite others into dialogue, to retrieve personal ideas from past posts to aid in personal healing in a safe space of solitude or with a trusted other, or to re-build one’s personal learning spaces and re-connect with others/self. In every single case, the blogger needs to begin with the solitary agent: oneself. Though the blogger need not require others to blog, blogging is so much more worthwhile when it invites others as witnesses, companions, and critics.Sometimes we clearly blog for others; at other times, entirely for oneself. At times we aspire to be guides, at others, we rant and rave and vent at the frustrations of the moment. This paradox is interesting. We assign ourselves a role (as a student as we see it), and then rebel against the constraints of that (self-created) role, and then eventually find a way of reconciling the self-imposed role with the new-found potential role of our expanded selves. We do this thanks to discussion within a community of bloggers.Blogging does that to a person: it expands our expectations, makes us yearn to express more of ourselves, pulls us towards the limits imposed by self and others as to how we should behave, and then shoves us past those limits.The private blogger is an interesting case. Most certainly this blogger can be perceived as being confined behind a self-imposed wall of criticism, of self-doubt or beliefs that hold them fast, almost paralyzing open communication that involves others. However, this is not necessarily a negative mind-set, as there are legitimate reasons for caution, for reluctance. The private blogger withholds activity for a time, sensing the emotional tone and getting a feel for the intellectual landscape. They are adept at observing and collecting data before acting. They take note and deploy interaction strategies best characterized as avoidant, or repellent, which involves a "process of rejecting, refuting, correcting or guarding against the connection"(Haskins, blog post, 2009). The private blogger culls connections, and puts up a high toll that prevents connections from occurring, similar to behavior described by Tom Haskins in his description of a process taxonomy. Silence and apparent inactivity on a blog do not necessarily mean a lack of interest in the interactions among peers; rather, it might instead suggest a period of intense observation and strategizing. Some of the strategizing might involve deciding with whom the learner will interact. Which peers share the most commonalities of interests and goals? How frequently will a learner post and comment with one’s peers? On what level do learners intend to interact? The private blogger will not interact on a private, personal level at the outset, and will not engage in chit-chat and socializing. It is not because they are asocial, or do not enjoy interaction of that kind. Instead, it is likely because their priorities are to approach the learning environment as a hunter, as a strategist, tracking and capturing resources to meet one’s own learning needs. To use an operating metaphor, some behaviours of private bloggers can be likened to hunter-gatherers, motivated by goal-seeking and utilitarian values. They are the lone wolves, the individualists, passing through multiples learning spaces and foraging along the way before moving on to other pastures. I think that a learning community needs to appeal to some degree to the hunter-gatherer, the primal self-centeredness of learners and instructors, if it is to thrive and flourish. As different individuals have different intentions and goals, every learning community needs to provide a forum for resolving conflicts, for airing personal views without concern for reprisals. Without a forum for airing differences, the community will not thrive. Private bloggers will become increasingly centered on short-term goals, and withdraw from participation with others.From my standpoint, the formation of a learning community among learners requires the strengthening of bonds between learners and their instructors, peers, and tutors. Private bloggers will “storm the castle” to elicit a response from the community leaders if their needs are not met, and the vacillation of learners between the roles of storm-trooper s and “rogue-solitaires” demonstrates the newly emerging shadow-side of group blogging in an educational setting. One common notion of bloggers is that one community is expected to meet all of one's needs, and a period of dissatisfaction ensues. In this phase, the private bloggers become avid critics.Private bloggers, and autonomous bloggers, to some extent, need to recognize that their own learning is in educational settings is deeply linked to their peers- so many more interconnections and synergies can be created more quickly than by relying solely on one’s own resources. Tolerating ambiguities and ambivalence, and holding steady to the course in the face of frustrations and dissatisfactions over how things ought to work involve a period of psycho-social adjustment. I applaud those learners who discuss their ambivalence because it makes more real the very turbulent thoughts and emotions disrupting the smooth flow of learning. Yet to me, this disruption is central to the learner’s autonomy crisis, a process where individuals are confronted with the assumptions they have made about how they are going to act, how they expect other peer to act, and how their instructor is going to act. The crisis requires a re-thinking of one’s expectations, a period of bargaining and negotiation, a letting go, or discernment period, and a period of integration and adaptation. The process is an emotional one. The process is a rewarding one, well worth experiencing.Glenn Groulx