Week 1- Blogs

My name is Naomi Morris. I'm a third year University student at CQUni in Rockhampton. I am currently studying Bachelor of Learning Management- Japanese (Primary).

For the subject Managing E-Learning, we have been asked to set up a profile in a blog site that we can then use for 'blogging' about certain learnt knowledge each week. This week we are looking at blogs in general and why they are or aren't a good use of ICTs for learning.

A blog is simply a written opinion (sometimes backed up by references) about a particular topic. More often than not a blog is simply someone's thoughts or interpretation about the topic. Topics can be anything from political to religion to personal and each blog can be as long or short as the writer wants it.

Using a blog as part of students' learning in schools would have its advantages and disadvantages. Before this task of writing blogs was set for students though, it would be the teacher's responsibility to assess whether the topic of the blog is engaging and also whether it is open enough for there to be a number of opinions/ideas written about it. Blogs would be a good source of learning for students (even if it was only learning about each others' opinions on a topic) and therefore the diversity in content options would be needed.

In a school setting, it would also need to be assessed as to whether the blog site (if a real one was used) is safe enough for students to access. Parents may not agree with their child's name being on the internet along with small bits of information about them that may be read in their blogs. Because of this fact, as well as others, it would be important that the teacher monitors all blogs and assures that students' content are all suitable.

Having just mentioned things that need to be assessed before blogs were used as a source of learning for students, once this is done efficiently, the use of blogs would be also very effective when it comes to teachers being able to assess students' understanding and knowledge.

The following PMI chart is representing the Positive, Minus and Interesting facts about using blogging in schools.

Postive- Students are able to research and read about peoples opinions on topics and then form and post their own. Allows students to comment on other peoples blogs and to have people comment on their own. This then allows for students to interact on an educational level with each other and other people (Seimens' theory). Also allows teachers to monitor each students' learning journeys. Students are more willing to take the task seriously if they know that it is going to be published for the public to read.

Minus- Blogs are not as confidential as other sites may be and therefore comments may not be relevant to the students' post. Also according to an online education blog website (2010), blogging in schools may encourage students to become competitive when it comes to the amount of comments on each of their blogs.

Interesting- Teachers would find it interesting to assess what each individual understands without worrying about whether they have copied someone else's ideas or made it up.



http://www.onlineedublog.com/blogs/