Using blogger to engage in reflective practice

It was important for my reflective portfolio for ETL507 to set up a space where I could continue to learn and grow as my career progressed. And so infowhelm.blogspot.com was born.  

Choosing a platform for reflection

After playing around with Weebly I chose not to use it for my portfolio, as I liked the widgets and the category sorting that Blogger offered. I also intend on continuing to use this blog after I have my degree, I didn't want the blog to become cyber trash like so many other portfolios I have stumbled across. My blog needs to grow and be dynamic, it needs to embed itself into the web.

I have tried with my reflective blog to regularly comment on articles, video's or images that I have come across in my travels. Most of the links at the top of the page are dynamic. If I add a blog spot that has been tagged as 'Learning Theory' or 'Reading', then when you click on that link at the top of the page it will pick up that post and display it along with the others.

If the blog post is quite long I have been using the "Read more>" feature to break up the piece so that the blog is a bit easier on the eye!

The widgets that I have included on my blog include:

• Top Posts; which updates automatically depending on the amount of hits that the blog entry has received. My post on attending the ALIA PD event at the Docklands Library has been getting a lot of love because ALIA re-tweeted the URL of the blog post.
• Blog List; where I have listed some blogs of fellow students. As I finish this course, the blog list will be cut down and refined.
• Category Tag List; It was important for me to take a look at what categories my posts were projecting so that I could go through and refine my tag list or post on something that I haven't thought about in a while.

Archiving my blog

But more importantly, I am also looking forward to using Blog2Print (http://blog2print.sharedbook.com/blogworld/printmyblog/index.html) to create a final bound book of my studies and reflections at CSU. I haven't priced it yet, but a bound book of my studies will be a nice way to celebrate completing my degree.