Thursday, March 03, 2005
Does Blogging Make You Smarter?
Thanks to Kimberley for pointing out this excellent article on the Brain of a Blogger.
It analyses the effect that blogging may have on our brains and the role it may play in promoting critical and analytical thinking.
If that were found to be so then I would ardently support any curriculum that promoted blogging as a way of social and personal interaction in schools. 
Here are the points covered.
1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking
Because blogs are text-based, bloggers must write and visitors must read (rather than passively view) the postings.
In research comparing newspaper and television news, public policy experts have previously found that consumers are far more likely to question what they read than what they see in pictures or on TV.
Blogs, with their text-based format, tend to avoid the more manipulative aspects of visually-embedded media.
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking
Blogs promote the sort of raw, spontaneous, associational thinking that has also been advocated by many creativity experts, including the brilliant mathematician Henri Poincare who recommended writing without much thought at times "to awaken some association of ideas."
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking
Back-and-forth blog-based exchanges between experts also provide a unique opportunity for young thinkers to witness and evaluate arguments from analogy on an ongoing basis, and to develop their own abilities to think analogically.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information
Because blogs link many facts and arguments in branching "threads" and webs, and append primary source materials and reference works, they foster deeper understanding and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction
Blogging may combine the best of "working by yourself" and "working with other people." Bloggers have solitary time to plan their posts, but they can also receive rapid feedback on their ideas. The responses may open up entirely new avenues of thought as posts circulate and garner comments.
So if you were looking for more reasons to start your own blog, well, here are five very good ones to get started right now. 
