Blogging about Blogging
Jul 17th, 2009 by Michele Brannon-Hamilton
I was first introduced to weblogs a few years ago when I was working as a freelance writer. At first they seemed like a novelty or just a different way to write for an audience. It soon became apparent though that there was something a bit different about blogging. The articles were short, current and constantly changing. Soon we began seeing blogging jobs popping up. People who owned online companies and websites were looking for people to write weekly blogs for them. The pay wasn’t great but the jobs were plenty.
When I started ETEC 565, I realized that there was more to blogs than I’d first realized. I hadn’t noticed the interactive nature of blogging. In fact, I’d never really been that interested in anyone commenting on my articles until I saw it happening through the blogs I was reading. Real conversations could begin and you could meet people with the same interests as you. Blogging seemed to have a life of its own with a natural growth of ideas. I believe it’s this potential for the growth of ideas that makes blogging a good tool to use in a classroom.
Educators can use blogs to promote writing, editing and publishing. Students can communicate and create with others through the publishing of their own ideas. In the classroom, I think blogs can be used to connect students in a school to each other but also to students in other schools. Connections lead to new ideas and new ideas lead to knowledge creation.
However, there are problems that need to be considered before using blogs in the classroom such as privacy and safety. I think instructors need to be fully aware of who has access to the blogs and how the information will be used. Instructors need to teach awareness and responsibility to students who may not be fully aware of the potential dangers online.
With safety measures in place, students can use blogs to communicate, create, collaborate, research and publish. Blogs can be tied together and content researched using RSS feeds and tags. After reading Alexander’s A new Wave of Innovation, I realize that blogs have many more uses than I originally fathomed. I will now consider the use of blogs in my own classroom in a new ways.
Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2), 34-44. Accessed online July 2009. http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0621.pdf