To Blog or Not to Blog

I have kept a journal or diary since I was eight years old.  I consider myself a writer and a teacher of writing.  Yet this feels so strange (and a little scary) to be writing a blog.  I do not quite understand the point or the power of the blog, and I'm hoping that by keeping one (writing one?--what's the proper verb here?), I'll discover both. 

I created this blog in response to an assignment for an education class.  My professor encouraged the class to chose a technological option we were unfamiliar with.  So here I am in very unfamiliar territory.  Writing to an audience I do not know and cannot imagine.  Strange!  My handwritten journal entries are mine--I don't worry about spelling or syntax or much less content as I know I am the only one who will read them.  This--this blog--makes me feel so much more censored and vulnerable.  However, I want to explore this.  I do not want to be one of the frumpy teachers who refuses to use technology because it's not the way "I did it."  I believe that technology can be a powerful teaching tool, and I want to explore how I can incorporate it into my own classroom.  That's why I chose to take the class I am taking, and that's why I am writing these words--sending them off into the Internet.

I have read other people's blogs--some of them written by friends.  I've found many entries humorous, and a few helpful for recipe ideas or vacation planning.  But overall I'm still mystified about the point of the blog.  It just seems like a self-centered exercise:  read about my life!  My thoughts!  My ideas and dreams!  I'm so fabulous and entertaining!  

Perhaps my feelings will change over the course of this course.  Of course, maybe they won't.  Ah, getting silly here.  Time to post my first post--post-haste.  Stop it with the word play!

Jess (do I even sign my post?  I've always signed my journal entries.  It just seems the proper ending.   I keep feeling like I'm breaking some Rules of Blogging, but really, are there such things?)