In the last three weeks, I’ve taken three separate three-day business trips: to Beijing, to Shanghai, and back to Beijing again. This may be nothing to you frequent fliers out there, but for me, it’s thrown me into mental and organizational chaos. When I get back into town each time, I’m frantically attempting to get back on top of things; in the process, I’ve neglected my beloved blog.

The only reason I’m not “offing” myself right now stems from my reflection on why I’m blogging. As I indicate here, the overwhelming  reason for my blogging is to learn. That is, throughout the process of blogging and reflecting, I’m extending myself into areas that I might not otherwise explore. Perhaps that is what I’m missing–not the blogging itself, but the reflection it necessitates. Regardless, if my blog becomes a “task” and not a vehicle for joyful learning, it might as well be a job, and I prefer not to go there with this particular activity.

So here I am blogging again after a couple of weeks of inactivity, and regardless of the rationale behind my blogging, I am once more at peace with the universe.

Why let students blog?  The list is infinite:  ownership of writing, connection to the world, motivation, authentic audience (not just teacher), multiple learning styles, prepare students for digital citizenship, gallery of class projects, students as teachers, parent connection,….If you would like a true list of reasons for students to blog, it wouldn’t take more that an afternoon of reading blogs to run across everything from the top 20 reasonsto winning a T-shirt  You can even hear about blogging straight from the mouth of students.  Why did my students start blogging?  I wanted them to be part of social technology outside of myspace.  I wanted them to actually see “outside of the box” outside of their town, their state, and their nation. I wanted them to take ownership in their education.  And I wanted my student from a town of less than 15,000 to see that they truly are part of this world and this world is open to them.  Any classroom can have a great journal with provoking higher order thinking questions, but that journal can’t interact with the students, it can’t ask questions, and it can’t expand students view and knowledge.

While the universe of women English China blogs may be smaller, these blogs add voices that may hint at the differences in experience between foreign men and women in China.  As a start, we compiled a directory of 56 women who blog about China primarily in English.  Most of these bloggers are currently in China but some are not.  The list also includes group blogs and anonymous blogs.

The move surely hurts my stats, but that’s not what it’s all about anyway, is it? In the meantime, I’ve been able to move everything but images from WordPress to this site. I’m looking forward to getting back to blogging. Enjoy!