Blogging About Blogging

Prior to beginning this master degree program, my idea of a blog was some random person writing their opinion about a topic important  to them. I usually accessed these blogs through a friend's Facebook post rather than go looking for them myself. Many of these blogs are informational such as the ones posted by my friend who is a curriculum director in  relatively large Michigan school district. On Facebook he will often comment on an article about an educational issue he finds interesting or controversial and will provide the link to the article. . While some of these articles come from actual publications others are come from what could be defined as a blog. He also used Facebook as a blog to bring his friends along on his family's long and heartbreaking journey of battling his wife's cancer. Many of my other friends recommend, comment on and link to blogs that tend to be humorous writing about various topics such as parenting. With this type of experience with blogs, I gave very little thought as to how they could be used in the classroom.


This view was challenged during a previous class when we created a blog to turn in assignments. Event though the blog was created using Blogger, I had a hard time thinking of the site as an actual blog. I am using the same site for the class I am currently in so you can see those previous posts. As you can see, the posts contained very little, writing, or humor (except maybe my transformations story). And so I learned that blogs can have a form other than journaling. After reading "7 things you should know about Blogs" and "7 things you should know about Videoblogging" both by Educause Learning Initiative, my perception of what a blog is has changed even more. The scenarios in both articles show how blogs can transcend the classroom and offer students and instructors a way to work collaboratively. I can see the advantages of using blogs in classes that involve writing. My question now is how to use them in a classroom that does not use a lot of writing?




"7 things you should know about Blogs" and 7 things you should know about Videoblogging can be found at www.educause.edu/eli/