Back in 2000 I used a blog as a collaborative tool to develop a piece of work about the relationship between chaos theory and curriculum development. Last weekend, my collaborator found the link and I had another look. There were a couple of ‘ouch’ moments but on the whole I’m happy with the work that we did and the conclusions that we came to. At least for where we were at back then.

We did our original work inside Blogger and then copied it all to a static webpage on a piece of web real estate that the company claims will be free for ever. Seven years down the track I’m not entirely certain that I want that work up on the web for all to see. Not that it’s easy to find. I was unable to track it down using any of the keywords or phrases inside it. So am I going to take it down? I probably won’t because however naive it reads, it does represent a piece of thinking at a certain point in time. Unless I get too paranoid about the stalkers.

I guess that’s one of the reasons why I am slightly cynical when I hear about these new tools called blogs. Or wikis. The tools have been around for a few years now. Blogs started when people decided they wanted to be able to diary on the web or keep collections of essays and ideas together and they wanted an easy way to do it. Blogs allow people to keep adding to their space and most readers rarely go beyond the front page so all of the older and possibly embarrassing writing is mostly hidden.

On a side note

It’s a little bit scary to look at your work with a critical eye. We did a bit of that scary stuff yesterday when we deconstructed a lesson that one of our cluster teachers had videoed as part on an action research project. Although the intention was to look at question types, there was so much other stuff opened up for all to see.

(Mandlebrot image from CC licensed Flickr image set)