Metablognition

As educators, we are familiar with the term "metacognition" -- the awareness or analysis of one's own thinking process.  We try to help our students develop this awareness.  We want them to know how they arrived at a particular conclusion and be able to explain it to others.  Blogging can help students develop this awareness.  Will Richardson, renowned edublogger, coined the term "metablognition" to describe the thinking processes that occur when a person blogs.  But how, exactly, does that work?

When a person blogs, he first needs to have some knowledge of (or experience with) the subject matter. This cognition can be acquired in any number of ways.  In order to share this knowledge with others via blogging, the author needs to be aware of what he knows, and he needs to process and analyze the information in order to decide how to express this knowledge in written form. Once these thoughts are composed, the author must decide if the words he has written sufficiently communicate his thoughts.  If they do, they are shared with an audience, with the hopes that someone who reads the blog post is motivated enough by it to post a comment. (Hopefully, that comment is also a well-thought out response.)

Once the post is published, the cognitive process doesn't have to stop. Comments to a blog post can support this thinking process by communicating additional information to the author.  This information can support the author's ideas, refute the author's ideas, or even present new ideas for the author to consider. In any case, the author further engages in analyzing information, continuing the cognitive process.  When students see that they have put a great deal of thought into a piece of writing, that it affected someone else in some way, and that they have been able to broaden their knowledge of a topic and create meaning from the ensuing discourse, they have engaged in metacognition, or in this case, "metablognition."

Welcome to my blog!

Hello there! Welcome to Storms Surge, my new blog.  Here I will discuss all things related to educational technology.  I plan to "re-energize" my curriculum this year, and I am hoping that blogging will help me to find the inspiration and motivation I need. Please join me in this endeavor, as conversation is much better than a monologue.