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Last year we spoke with Dr. Eilís Ní Dhúill about the Thesis Talk ( https://thesistalk.wordpress.com ) blog at NUI Galway . The blog is written by PhD candidates from the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies. Chronicling the varying experiences of the College's research students, it provides a platform to describe and share PhD experiences, research, feedback from conferences attended, and to ask the community questions or give tips and advice.  Her account of Thesis Talk is well worth a listen. She outlines how openness and sharing of knowledge are manifested through scholarly blogging. The benefits include connecting with a community of peers, developing writing skills, and engaging in open knowledge production and sharing. Tweet

Image by andyp uk on flickr  A couple of weeks ago, as part of an informal lunchtime conversation session on the topic of Academic Blogging , Simon Warren ( @worried_teacher ) invited me to speak, along with John Danaher ( @JohnDanaher ), on my blogging experiences. This forced me to take some time and reflect on my own practice as a blogger, what I blog about and why. So, thank you Simon for giving me the purpose to reflect. John blogs at philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.ie and is a prolific blogger. He admits to spending between 10 to 15 hours per week on his blog, writing an average of 2 lengthy posts each week. His writing is habitual and he starts most days writing at least 1000 words. He writes for research purposes and much of what he writes is repurposed for papers and articles.  Clearly I am not nearly in the same league as John Danaher, but listening to him speak, I realised that some of our reasons for blogging are similar.    The LearnTechGalway blog...

I am sitting in the airport at Philadelphia, waiting for the next stage of my journey to BbWorld14 in Las Vegas. It seems a very long time since I set off, early this morning, from Galway. I got the 5:15 CityLink bus from Galway to Dublin airport, accompanied by my 12 year old daughter, who is spending a few days with family in Dublin.  As we sat into our seats, my daughter took out her mobile phone, connected to wifi, attached her ear buds and proceeded to ignore me for the whole 3 hour journey. As we left Galway, I was surprised that she started taking photographs out the window - it was dark - and posting them on snapchat and Instagram. Then I realised that she was starting to document her visit to Dublin, which is probably almost as exciting for her as my trip to Las Vegas. Maybe she's a future blogger? In contrast to her single device, I am travelling with at least four (five if you count my watch - which I still use to tell the time). I have my phone and my iPad, to keep me c...