When is a blog useful?

If a teacher teaches but the students do not learn, has the teacher really taught? This is a particular problem with lecturing. A blindfolded lecturer could deliver to an empty lecture theatre. He gets paid for delivering the lecture not for the extent to which students learn anything.

The lecturer could send along an audio or video version of his lecture. This could have been professionally crafted and thus be more inspiring than his basic talk. There is the option of getting a professional communicator to present the lecture. It could be made available on the internet. This already happens (eg www.udacity.com ). The innovative phenomenon is called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

As it is with teaching/lecturing so it might be with blogging. A blog can be kept personal or opened to a limited audience or to the world. If the blog is offered to the world but the world does not visit has the blogger really blogged?

This blog is made available to the world but I do not promote it. The stats suggest that there have been about 3000 visits since it began seven months ago and that it now gets an average of 17 visits per day. Some of these will be from search engine spiders. Some will be from real and virtual friends. There are a few real friends who visit fairly regularly.

 I seem keen to feed this blog but I don’t know why. I could brainstorm it:

• Old habits die hard – I gather info and present lectures. Monologue. Chalk and talk.
• But I also facilitate learning – drop thought/feeling pebbles in the consciousness of others. Fascinating facts. Novel ways of understanding. Share what excites me. The paradigm shift.
• The blogs are not so much lectures (impersonal rational) as stories (personal intuitive).
• There is the technology to invite comment from visitors but very little arrives
• I use my subjective self as a case study. This goes against my scientific training. But research patterns are changing.
• Experimental, positive and evolutionary psychology is linking with neuroscience to demonstrate that the neutrality of the scientist is bogus. The scientific way is still ‘best’ but there is need to be mindful of the subjective biases built into scientists.
• The Bright approach to how the mind/brain evolved and now functions is gob smacking. Freud and Skinner both led psychology on wrong directions.
• I have adapted in various ways to the Parkinson’s Disease. There could be a list. But there is the agency problem. To what extent is the thought/feeling caused by the PD, the medication, old age, mindfulness – or just by the ongoing story that is me.
• I am no longer as anxious as I was. But there is still an undercurrent of depression that manifests as ‘can’t be bothered’ (CBB). This links to procrastination and laziness.
• These blogs are based on ideas that are already in the brain. I am no longer into the one-page summary approach to other people’s ideas.
• I am promoting the paradigm shift. Being ‘bright’ rather than ‘super’. I am part of a notional team. A cause. A purpose. I am presumably hard wired to belong and be motivated.
• The downside = the CBB. (Part PD and part life stage) The upside = the paradigm shift
• Lyrics from the 1970s - “He has a sermon that never will bear preaching”; “He rationalized his thought about everything he sought”. But it is different now.
• I have forgotten how strongly I was influenced by Howard Gardner. One of his books is called “Changing Minds”. He puts the variables on a matrix and maps them. Powerful stuff. He is highly recommended.
• Because of the paradigm shift there is awareness of the ongoing mental churn. Concentration involves focus but this can flicker on and off as attention shifts to accommodate the ongoing monitoring process. Absent minded professors are lion fodder unless they are surrounded by more attentive group members.
• “It takes a whole village to grow a child.”
• “Give me the child till he is five and I will give you the man.” – says who?
• AHA – change gear – move to the cutting edge - The Thinking Ape: The Enigma of Human Consciousness - October 10, 2012 Featuring: Steve Paulson, Nicholas Schiff, Daniel Kahneman, Laurie Santos, David Chalmers - Watch on YouTube 
• A video group blog rather than a text one.  It could serve as resource material for a MOOC.