Discussion #1 Blog in Education

Blogging in education can have a great impact on communication and writing skills for students. Students can see their work published and see an immediate result of their work. Students can blog while learning and using new technologies. Blogging can help their writing skills, but also increase technology use skills. They can use the forum for discussion and group work. Students can easily share their blog with friends and family. This is also a great format for students to create a portfolio and a lot more fun for them to create. Students have time to reflect before responding and can potentially come up with more insightful creative answers. Blogging gives students the time to reflect back on what was learned and put it into their own words, thus teachers can check for learning while giving the student a fun way to express what they learned. Blogs also can show learning over the year and the development of the writing of the student over time.

Blogs give students who may not otherwise participate in class the chance to be a part of the class without the fear of messing up in front of everyone. Blogging can give students the confidence they may not have otherwise.

Blogs are challenging for teachers because students have to learn social skills also and having students just sit and type at the computer is not the way to go. Teachers have to balance appropriate times to blog. There is also the privacy issue. The Internet can be dangerous for users and teachers must follow all district guidelines when letting students blog. Teachers also have to watch closely for content and make sure content is appropriate.

I do not use blogs in teaching, since I do not teach, but I will use them when I teach. I have experienced blogs in courses and think it is a good tool to teach me how to use various items and pull them together in the blog. I think it is a great portfolio and I really like being able to store it where I can access it from any Internet connection. This makes it easy to update and edit as needed. For example, last semester I took a course I had to create a blog and use it as my blogfolio. This was the first time I completed a blogfolio. I was able to access my blog from home and work to work on it as I had time during lunch or before work began or at home. This made the course less stressful for me in knowing I wouldn’t forget my work at home.