Blogs are useful in several aspects of life, especially in education. Regardless of what part of education you are in an online blog or “weblog” can assist in conveying information or gathering information.
The overwhelming amount of information, talent, and resources in the world everyone has an opinion and these can be delivered in a number of methods. “Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts” ("Blogs," 2009, para. 2).
Blogs can be a personal spaces for daily commentary about what’s going in your life, like the old school diary in the new age. Students can uses these to reflect on their school experiences, and to grow with their writing while they do this. Teachers can grow on this concept and have specific assignments to write about.
These spaces aren’t just for writing; they can also be learning tools for teachers or professionals. Many webloggers, blogvangelists, newspapers, and magazines update blog links and feeds (RSS) daily to keep readers informed of current trends of education, technology, business, or government. These types of feeds can be used to help students find articles to write about or to keep up to date on current events. By using weblogs teachers can also conduct reading circles, discussions, review and feedback that extends the classroom experiences.
Many teachers, and students can use weblogs to connect with others with a common interest from anywhere in the world. These tools can be utilized to showcase your student’s talent. Any type of talent can be displayed through the multitude of media available in weblogs.
One of the most useful ways to use a blog is course management. With the ability to post links, resources, and articles for students to easily locate. Some of the more advanced multimedia blog sites can allow for uploading documents, audio, and videos for even more capabilities in the student’s overall experiences.
Other good articles to read about Blogs and Education:
http://incsub.org/blog/2005/blogs-anywhere-high-fidelity-online-communication
http://secondlanguagewriting.com/explorations/Archives/2006/Jun/HowtoUseBlogsintheClassr.html
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/blog-basics
http://digitalwriting.pbworks.com/Using-Blogs-in-the-Classroom
The American ‘Inside Higher Education’, which offers a number of different blogs:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/blogs
References
Blog. (2009, October 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 1, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blog&oldid=317552248
Image from Getty Images: Royalty Free
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