Week 4 - Blog Posting #8 -Reflection on Blogging

As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, I've been blogging for quite some time. I started on LiveJournal back in the early 2000's. I also started a journal here on Blogger earlier this year for a side project I've been working on. Blogging for personal use has become second nature to me, and I spent the early part of this year learning how to blog for business purposes. This month, however, was my first real look at blogging for educational purposes. Out of everything Web 2.0 that we talked about, I strongly suspect that blogging is what I'll be using the most in the future.

I love how blogging can easily be either a student-centric activity, a teacher-centric activity, or a blend of both. The student-centered blog postings my classmates and I wrote this month remind me of the many reaction papers I wrote in high school and university. However, this time I not only got to read my work, I also got to see how all my classmates felt (and respond to their postings as well). Instead of our opinions being between the instructor and ourselves, they're now a part of a community discussion. I absolutely see myself doing this with students in the future.

I also liked the idea of creating an instructor blog for my students. I could share websites related to my class, post online videos, start debates and conversations, summarize class lectures and activities, preview materials for next class, release study notes, and just simply communicate with a large group of students in one central place.

In addition, I like the potential to use blogs to share ideas with other instructors. Blogs like (e)Learning 2.0 & Beyond ...it's all about what can/will be and Moving at the Speed of Creativity show how professionals can use blogs to share content with collegues in a more community-minded format than a plain website.

Blogging for me represents the best of what Web 2.0 can accomplish: it's an incredibly easy-to-use tool with a low skill threshold, can be molded into use for almost any task, and promotes community in many formats.