8 years to the day I created this blog and began open journaling and reflecting. Now seems right to share a bit about my approach.
Building off my asynchronous approach to a webinar that I previously described. I'm attempting here to share my story of how I created and approach my blog. Which I define as authentic; sharing my personal and professional learning and life – highs and lows, challenges, difficulties, failures, successes, achievements and my overall growth and educational journey. As with my LinkedIn profile, I use this blog to remind me of my activity and thinking as it can be easily forgotten! I detail my overall rationale and other open journaling benefits of my blog in the blog post 'Why openness is good'.
Before I get into it, just a little background context... From my years of experience of open reflective practice, I can't stress enough the importance of reflective journaling. Not just here on my blog but in general. For example, when I first started my Digital Practice Adviser role at Nottingham Trent University. I created a Microsoft Word document named "One to one notes". Initially this to be used to prepare and process my thoughts and progress updates on my work and projects. However, this quickly became more than just a meeting preparation document, I used it to record and structure my thinking, responses and capture my feelings on situations. It developed my confidence as I was able to position myself better in meetings and other situations by doing it. This document captures my whole work experience in this role and it's been highly influential in my communication and leadership. You do need to dedicate time to input though - akin to my approach that I walkthrough on the use of another medium. I also used a similar learning log approach when doing FutureLearn courses and the recent Jisc Digital Leaders programme, as well as my Movement Medicine work.
Not only do you get the journaling benefits, you come across gems like these... I scrolled through the one to one document recently and I saw comments from when I first started to where I am now and it was heartening to see how much I have grown and changed in confidence - I had a tough challenge ahead of me adapting to a university and the team I was in. I also came across a good piece I wrote in the one to one document that I had forgot about; a reflection on a good training session, as I was focussing too much on the negatives - published at the bottom of the blog post 'Facing my frequency'. Another recent example was when I produced a short summary document for my top manager detailing my interest areas and strengths, with the aim of shaping my role focus towards them. The content was originally adapted from some material I did a couple of years prior. However, this exercise didn't matter in the end as I got a new role shortly afterwards, but my top manager said that it was useful and helped them reflect on the current position of the team.
However, there are some downsides to using the one to one document that I used to help me. 1) Sometimes I had too many notes and didn't prioritise them. 2) Much of what I had wrote was all fresh and not refined. 3) As I was prepared, I was better able to inject into conversations and meetings (not all bad stuff I'll add), and perhaps I should then structure how I will deliver my comments in those situations.
Now, how to create an authentic blog, based on my approach and experience...
That's the article: How to create an authentic blog
You are now reading the article How to create an authentic blog with link address https://technoupdatviral.blogspot.com/2021/08/how-to-create-authentic-blog.html
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