Reflecting on blogging
I'm wondering whether 'blogging' is, or would be, an effective means for encouraging reflection on professional or personal practice; all the authors I have read seem to agree that reflection is essential for enhanced learning. Blogging certainly encourages you to think back, mark and record what you have done or thought about, but I don't suppose that this guarantees that you learn from the recording or would do anything differently in the future.

I have found this blog very useful to keep in a number of ways:

• I now have a fairly accurate, if selective, record of what we have done during our time here in Brazil, which will be interesting to look back on. This is enhanced by the possibility of adding photos to a blog.
• I have learned about how to blog, the discipline it requires and quite a lot about digital photography and editing photos (although there is still a long way to go on this).
• I am aware that this writing is open to the public and have had to check the accuracy of some of the things I have written about, by researching aspects of Brazil on the internet and through books, talking to people etc.
• I have had to think about things like personal bias, subjectivity, balanced and fair accounts etc.
• I have thought about why I select to write about certain things and not others, how I am reacting to my experience here, what I am learning and why.

I'm sure there's probably more if I think about it.

The point of reflection, as I see it, is to be able to apply learning to future practice and make appropriate changes. I'm not sure whether keeping this blog will change my personal or professional practice in any way. It's definitely a diary, but I'm not sure that it would count as a 'reflective diary'.

I will now have to think about what I would need to do to bridge the gap.