Beldarrian (2006) states “blogs are collection of writings that are easily published and accessed through the internet” (pg 140).
Communication has changed drastically over the years. Writing with pen and paper to typing on a computer to actually posting your thoughts online so people can read your ideas all over the world and they can comment to your posts. Blogging is a communication tool that is used to share ideas and thoughts by posting text, files, images, audio and embedding video to your posts. Blogging is a concept that I have heard about and understand but really have not explored a lot with. I have used blogging in the Education Design and Evaluation course at Full Sail University and became more familiar with the aspects of what blogging really means and how to use it in your classroom.
If I had my own class, I would defiantly use blogging for a language arts assignment. Instead of using the “traditional” journal assignment with the black and white composition notebooks and writing each journal entry, I would replace it with blogging on a blog site where they have to type and communicate about their ideas on a particular site. Flierl and Fowler states that blogging is used as a mostly as an online communication journal (pg 1). I would defiantly use it the same way by creating “blog” topics that the students have to post their ideas about the topic.
There are many different blog site out there but its up to you as the educator to research each site and see which one bests fits your students needs and you as the facilitators needs. Flierl and Fowler’s article “Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis” provide many different sites with overviews about each site. Please check the article out if you are interested.
References
Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. 27(2). 139-153. Retrived January 9th, 2010 from http://www.dastous.us/edtechadvocate/2.pdf
Retrieved clip art from http://www.wpclipart.com/computer/people_on_computers/At_Computer_silhouette_LCD.png.html
I've tried a few of the blogs with my students: Class blogmeister is one of them. I've found that though they mean well, sometimes they are hard to navigate, especially from the student standpoint. I still would like to have my students blog, especially for the very reasons that you mentioned.
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