A2.2: 7 Things You Should Know About Blogs

Deidra Darst
8/28/07

7 things you should know about blogs. (2005). Educause Learning Initiative. Retrieved August 28, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7006.pdf

 

TAP: The topic of this document is the blog: what it is, who uses it, how it works, its importance, its negative aspects, what is in its future and its implications on teaching and learning. This article was written for an audience interested in blogging or for those in the educational field who wish to include technology in their instructional techniques. The purpose of this document is to inform the reader about blogging. It provides a brief overview the history and future of the online journaling technology.

Claim: This article claims that blogging can be used for a variety of purposes, whether personally, collaboratively, politically or educationally. The blogging technology is easy to use and aids users in sharing their work and ideas with the online community.

Evidence: Many World Wide Web users have joined the weblog community. Weblogs are user-friendly because they do not require knowledge of HTML code, hence allowing thousands of people to operate them. Weblogs have been created for a variety of purposes and causes: personal diaries, editorials, political and educational issues, campaign issues, informative purposes and for entertainment. Bloggers, those who use weblog services, form a community with other users. This connection allows information, ideas, debates and awareness to spread throughout the online community. Many educators have incorporated blogging into their classrooms and are experiencing the benefits. Students become active in the learning process, and they benefit from the peer interaction created by the weblog community.

Connections: As new blogger myself, I found this article very helpful. The article stated that many teachers are incorporating blogs into their classrooms. My CD 315 class is currently using www.wordpress.com to share our academic work with one another. This article has helped me understand the relevance of this class. I am not maintaining this weblog for my personal benefit, but for the benefit of others. My classmates and fellow bloggers can read my posts and, hopefully, learn something from my experiences and ideas. I will benefit from my blogging experience because I am improving my digital literacy skills. At the beginning of this class I considered myself to be somewhat computer-illiterate, but I hope that the conclusion of the semester I feel highly computer-, information- and digitally-literate.

I thought about the process of blogging during my previous readings about information and digital literacies. Blogging is but one of the many options available today by way of technology. This article mentioned the ever-changing world of the blog, which further explains the need for improving one’s digital literacy. Technology is always expanding, so individuals must work diligently in order to maintain digital literacy. Effective use of the weblog community will ultimately improve the blogger’s digital and information literacies.

This document presented information that will likely be important to me as a speech-language pathologist. For instance, a fluency client could blog about his dysfluencies: when they occurred, why they occurred, how he felt about them and what compensatory strategies he used. This would allow me, as the clinician, to monitor his experiences outside of the therapy room. He could meet other stutterers through his blog and the two could share concerns, ideas and information. A third-party blogger could read his material and think, “I feel the same way – I thought I was the only one in the world who feels this way.” Many people can benefit from a single blogger’s efforts.