Blogs. You can’t go online these days without being bombarded by a host of sites that deliver information using a Blog platform.Coupled with the latest technology for information delivery (RSS—Really Simple Syndication), we can barely get through our email or feed readers in a day.What are these proliferating web creatures that threaten to devour all our time, and what can we and our students gain from either reading or producing them?Tough questions both, worthy of some serious academic attention.
A “blog” (an abbreviated form of “web log”) is most generally defined as a frequently updated, online journal presented in reverse chronological order that provides links to other websites or blogs and allows (usually) readers to submit feedback in the form of comments.(For those interested in the history of blogs,
Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the topic.)
When blogs first became popular (and popularized), I was at a loss to explain their proliferation; that is, my sense was that they were not much different from the already established venues—e-mail lists and threaded discussion boards—for communication and information exchange.As far as I can tell, the differences lie primarily in access, availability, and, for want of a more descriptive term, aesthetics far more than content.Don’t get me wrong—these areas can have a tremendous impact on student engagement, but it’s a difference of degree rather than kind.And for students and school systems unable to purchase course management software such as
Blackboard™ or
WebCT™, blogs can perform many of the same functions at no cost.So what are the advantages of incorporating blogging into/out of the classroom?
First and foremost, blogs encourage and facilitate student writing.Without knowing a snippet of html or the difference between a web site, discussion board, or text message, students can write and publish their ideas to an audience that extends far beyond their teachers, classmates, family, and
Facebook™ friends.Moreover, blogs can help students make a stronger connection between the things they do with writing for “fun” and the things they do with writing for “work.”While a majority of first- and second-year students proudly <sigh> proclaim that they don’t read or write outside the classroom unless forced to, these same students will admit to spending hours instant messaging or surfing the web.
What follows is a kind of “top 10” reasons to use blogs as part of our teaching strategies, aggregated in a “Why Weblogs” post on
weblogg-ed.
- [Blogs] create what Pat Delaney calls a blank piece of digital paper for writing upon (and throwing away if need arises)
- Blogs are an easy way to create a web site quickly
- Blogs are a place to collaborate
- [Blogs] prepare pupils to participate in a rapidly changing world in which work and other activities are increasingly transformed by access to varied and developing technology
- [Blogs allow for] an increase in shared meaning and understandings
- Ideas are presented as the starting point for dialogue, rather than an ending point
- Weblogs offer a way to initially cloister, organize, assess and criticize, and then re-distribute knowledge and information for the purpose of convening a community that will then function to amass knowledge, each member sharing, collaborating, redistributing and redefining themselves in the act of knowledge production
- Weblogs can become digital portfolios of students’ assignments and achievements
Labels: Web, web2.0
