Blogging & Gardner Intrapersonal intelligence

I've been spending most of my classwork time playing with other Web 2.0 toys & am enjoying learning Moodle, creating my first wiki and reading and responding to the bulletin board discussions. Although I am sad that we have been divided into two groups -- I think it is really interesting to read the posts of all classmates. So far, I haven't been able to attend either of the Wimba sessions for this course but have everything off of my schedule November 5th, so I am looking forward to finally hearing my classmates' voices.

Now for class content... I am thinking about Howard Gardner this week and musing over how to teach lessons that allow various learners to use their "natural" intelligences. Exciting new educational technology might challenge traditional pedagogy and allow online educators to put some of Gardner's ideas into practice.

I wrote a bit about Interpersonal intelligence in my post to the discussion board this week. I think that discussion boards, wikis, and meeting software like Wimba are superb tools for allowing Gardner's "interpersonally intelligent" learner to engage the content in a way that is productive for them.

But blogs seem to feel more like the personal diary/ journal where the author writes traditionally private reflections. Although I realize that blogs can be easily made "public", the writing style of most blogs that I've read (outside of this class) are personal and sometimes confessional. The material is similar to what I would find in a journal instead of a class discussion.

I think that a blog might be a good tool for the "intrapersonally intelligent" learner to wrestle with new content in an online class.

The intrapersonally intelligent learners, according to Gardner, are:
self-reflecting, know their strengths and limitations and are very aware of their own moods, motivations and intentions.

I think that the blog is the perfect online tool for these types of learners to reflect on their coursework....