Blog, blog, blog
During my time in this program I have become far more familiar with weblogs than I had been before. I actually find them to be an easy way for people to have a presence online. I know for someone like me who doesn’t have alot off html experience (although I’ve been learning in ETEC 590 with my ePortfolio – boy, is that a steep learning curve!) it’s a great way to be able to express myself online (and meet course requirements!). I think this would be a great way for teachers to have a web resource for their students. The amount of time required to set one up and maintain it as compared to a webpage is considerably less and requires less knowledge.
I browsed through some of the educational weblogs and found them quite interesting. I could easily spend a considerable amount of time going through them and reading all that they have to say. I like that the comments section of a blog allows for a healthy discussion of issues in the blog. The content in these blogs is quite varied; everything from teaching techniques and latest news stories about education, to selling books on education. If I were to set up a blog outside of a graduate course, I would probably use one as a resource for my classes that I teach. At this point, though, I really like how Moodle works so I think I would probably use that as a class resource in my teaching.
I have done one course in this program, ETEC 522, that was completely set up within a blog format. I actually did not enjoy the experience as much as I did using Blackboard and WebCT Vista. I found the reverse linear nature of the course framework harder to follow than the design of Vista. Blogs are great for a number of different topics but I just didn’t feel that it worked well as a course framework.
Overall, I’ve been pleased with using a blog as a reflective repository for what I have learned in this course. I like that I can quickly go in and put down my thoughts without having to worry too much about design or technical issues. For this purpose, I think a blog is great. I think we’re going to see more and more blogs out there and that should help people find a voice online who normally wouldn’t.
Cheers,
Ken