A new blog and a confession

I have started blogs before. I require graduate students in my courses to create their own blogs. I have lamented about how professors should create and maintain their own blogs (See Blog Overload in the Chronicle of Higher Education). Yet, I have repeatedly failed to keep a blog going for more than a semester. Possibly, this blog will meet the same fate but I think I have discovered why my attempts have failed:

(1) There are a lot of people writing about the same kinds of things I am thinking about daily (see, for example, Chris Sessums, Will Richardson and Wesley Fryer for starters - you can also take a look at all the Blogs I subscribe to here). If I am going to take the time to write as eloquently as these folks I need to do to it for grant applications or refereed publications (i.e. the places where I receive credit for my efforts from my institution). In this blog brevity rules which brings me to my next point.

(2) I am a Mom of two young boys. I don't have a lot of extra time and they are my number one priority. I need to make sure any "extra" effort I put into my work serves a personal and professional passion.

(3) I have never targeted an audience. As a matter of fact, one of my blogs was entitled "Random Thoughts." Some people can get away with that quite well. Not me. I need a focus and my number one focus is my children. So, I plan to share with and gain ideas from other Moms trying to use technology as another tool to enrich the lives of their children.

We'll see how it goes.