Blogging - Fresh Approach or Stale Ideas?

Written on 08:41 by Unknown

Blogging Fresh Approach or Stale Ideas?

Blogging has had an epidemic rise in interest of late and everyone seems to be contributing their ideas and thoughts to a growing social media community. People blog about games, technology, education, flowers, Lego, cars, the latest products and so on. Retailers are now also using blogs effectively to add new advertising and promotional properties to their business without getting their hands dirty to speak. Instead they rely on an ever willing fan base of bloggers who's reward for promoting the company is products or its monetary equivalent. If you are unfamiliar with blogging please check out these guides:


With this shift to online commentary it would be apt that our learners embraced the blogging revolution as necessary part of their e-education.

I have used blogs in my teaching and learning in several different ways including online diaries, personal research, staff development and this e-learning blog and with the range of blogging platforms available today and the perks of social media compatibility, there are opportunities to use blogs for many more educational reasons. Here is a sample with some associated pros and cons.

Research
Blogs offer a wealth of information to whoever should access them. With blogs that are tagged you will be surprised to find interesting articles that perhaps you never thought might fit your research. They are a great way to find reviews of websites or resources or simply to view another persons ideas about something you are passionate about. Generally the more professional blogs are linked to or hosted on their own servers and can lead you to a whole new range of e-resources and online commentary.

In a twist you could encourage your Learners to use a blog as their own research journal where they post and share their own research findings. This way it offers greater evidence of work and when the work was discovered. Tis can be of benefit when logging a learning journey.

Group Blog
In the past my Learners have completed group projects sometimes as a larger group and occasionally in smaller sub groups. A blog offers an opportunity for the Learners to create and online account of the project from its inception right up to completion. Because blogs allow embedding of pictures, videos and other media they are great for making a simple account of what they did that day into something more attractive and meaningful. Furthermore blogs such as Blogster (other good platforms available!) offer fantastic connectivity with a range of services like YouTube, Google+, Picasa, Twitter and Facebook. This allows Learners to easily access advanced features with little knowledge and also offers great opportunities for promotion. This in itself introduces questions about Safeguarding and E-Safety but many of the major platforms have excellent privacy controls and blogs can be limited in their access. Finally most of the platforms have smartphone and tablet apps so blogs can be accessed and posts made literally from anywhere at any time, perfect if you encourage your Learners to bring and use their own devices.

Community Hub
This blog is edited and maintained by three like minded authors who share a common interest in e-learning in education. Many blogs form parts of communities such as Parenting of DIY. In these communities there may be several groups of people that blog about particular topics and generally share ideas with other bloggers. The more popular blogs may receive some financial backing and thus offer competitors or rewards for offering your ideas. With education blogs like this, one interacts with like minded groups of people that share and comment on the blog postings which in turn offers great opportunities for expanding learning and is another way of linking with subject specialists. Similar to the group blog, whole course groups could interact with a community blog provided by the course leaders or a chosen few from across the year group. This is a great way to evaluate learning opportunities with a greater emphasis on qualitative data that can be achieved in an informal and anonymous way. Again with the correct social media interaction the community can be increased from a course group to a whole subject area across the whole world, excellent for distance learning and diverse learning groups.


Hopefully this overview has been helpful for some simple uses of blogs in education. There are however still pros and cons to using blogs and the choice to use them must be informed by the need of the Learners and the subject content being appropriate.

Pros
Blogs can offer Lots of information but in bite size chunks
Connect to like minded individuals
The better blogs are updated regularly
Great social media connectivity
Good safeguarding and e safety controls
Accessible by many devices.

Cons
Validity of information can be an issue in higher level work
Most blogs are Opinion not fact unless research based
Some blogs may be run for profit so offer incentives to become involved which can lead to spam and sharing your details.
Monitoring larger or several individual blogs can be time consuming.
Learners need to learn online etiquette before posting to prevent slander and abuse.

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