Right, blogging.
I consider myself an early trend adapter. The blogging was consistent for a fortnight or so, and then it hit me. The regularity was starting to bore me, and there I was wondering what was the actual purpose of blogging and hoping that me and blogging would go our separate and parallel ways. Maybe, one day, I would look back and mock my old self for the ridiculous number of posts ranting about basically everything that didn’t go my way.
So, here I am, answering questions that I set out many years ago. According to the first week’s reading, “Blogs in Media Education” by Adrian Miles, blogging doesn’t mean replicating print literacy but instead is a professional analysis of print literacy and research. The point that was relevant to myself was that if blogging was not strongly enforced into the learning process, students, like myself, would treat blogging as a rote activity, as said by Miles himself.
Do not use blogs to replace writing or reader-response journals. If the only goal is to get students to write online what they would otherwise put in their notebooks, it’s probably not worth the hassle. Blogs can do much, much more. Use blogs to enhance personal journals. Take advantage of the community-building potential. Let students work as a group of individual writers.
Do check out Mardi’s post for a further read on the subject.