Blogging in Education

"Panelists: Blogs are changing education Winners of the first-ever 'Best of the Education Blog' Awards discuss blogging's impact on teaching and learning" article describes how blogging in education has been changing rapidly. When blogging in classes, a student can post their own ideas about a subject and the classmates can respond in their agreements or disagreements. Anyone is able to have access to the discussions posted, whereas the work can be meant for class discussions or for personal views on topics. The Florida Educational Technology Conference was hosted in Orlando, Florida on March 23rd to recognize the "Best of the Education Blog." This conference discussed greatly on how blogging is helping education with students being able to express their ideas and feelings to their peers. A quote from the article that shows how all of education supporters are agreeing with blogging in the education field: "The impact of blogging on teaching and learning can be profound." Children who are using blogging in school are excited to post, comment, and read other peers blogs to get other ideas on topics. Blogging motivates the students in allowing for them to read what other students are posting where as when the work is handed in to the teachers, only the teacher is able to read the work.

In education, learning of technology has been increasing at a ever so rising pace. Elementary students are learning about technology almost all of their lives now a days to better their ability in the work force along with the high demand of technology moving into the classrooms. Blogging is used in schools for many different purposes. Teachers like to use blogging for their students to have better interaction with each other on different topics being learned. When a students posts a blog about their opinion of a story, another student may read the blog and comment on it according to how they feel about it.

In my Intro to Computers through Education class is using the blogging method to allow students to post and comment on their classmates work. I enjoy this by being able to write my own opinion about an assignment, in most cases it is on articles, and I am able to comment on my classmate's work on my opinion of their work. Sometimes when reading an article, I can be narrow minded in thinking the article means one way but when a classmate gives their advice on the subject matter it opens up my horizons. Another way that I am able to see blogging is through my room mate. She is in a Styles and Ways of Blogging class which is all to do with blogging. They have their own blogging site and are assigned to post a blog each week. These blogs are up to the students and allow for them to be created. My room mate has made her blog personalized to her interests. For instance, the name of her blogging website is "Lenscapees". Kind of like Landscapes but she likes to take photos so its Lens is added instead of Land. She communicates with her fellow classmates through this in seeing how blogging can have an affect on her opinion of things and education.

I think that future research must be done on blogging because like myspace and facebook, blogging could become open to everyone and be more of a journal page rather than to better the technology through education.