Blogging

I've given myself several weeks to explore Blogger as a tool and come to understand its limitations and possibilities as an online space.
It is one of my favoured online spaces (group 1 technology); probably because I have become familiar with its layout and options. I have always found it user friendly and engaging. It has been a great way for me to keep track of my progress throughout the course of E-learning. It has been a stable platform for me to record my learning and emotions. It has allowed me to engage in ITC and helped me become comfortable with the potential of online spaces and my own online identity.

Blogging is beginning to enter education (an example is this course itself) and I believe that is for numerous reasons. Blogs are personal and allow ownership of work. They can be updated on campus, in an online cafe or in the comfort of ones own home. They can be shared and have feedback provided to them. Conversations can be had using the comment feature. Links, audio, videos, html for other technologies such as Voki and Dipity Timelines and pictures can be embedded into blogs. They can be customized with free templates, layouts or html (believe me I tried a lot!) and the adjustment of text font, size and colour. Gadgets can be added to the side of Bloggers; I've added a poll, a Voki, a picture and a slide show to mine. They encourage collaboration and reflective and critical thinking in learners (and I speak from personal experience).

They are an extremely personal web space and I can see them working well as a learning tool to promote creative and critical thinking in learners. I can also see them working well as an assessment tool - perhaps students could blog from the perspective of a character from a book, movie or history to demonstrate a complex understanding of perspectives. Or they could blog from their own perspective about their learning or document their progress. They could explore themes through their blog or reflect on experiences.

There are weaknesses in blogging, however. They do tend to encourage individual thought processes without allowing for much collaboration on projects outside of the comment feature. They are also a very visual orientated tool and because of that content may be sacrificed at times. They rely on Internet connectivity and because of this some students may be disadvantaged if they cannot access a reliable source of Internet outside of school time.

At all times learners and learning managers are required to consider safe, legal and ethical guidelines. Blogger establishes an online identity and learners need to understand and be aware of this. Creating unprofessional and inappropriate online identities can have ramifications in the future - employers searching possible employees on microblogs such as Facebook provides examples of this. Users of Blogger need to carefully consider postings and be disinclined to post negative personal comments online as such "venting" can have legal consequences. Learners should be educated about copyright laws and online obligations such as acknowledging sources of pictures and videos. Privacy laws need to be considered as well and a set of class rules regarding blogging may help to educate learners and protect them from breaking laws if rules are adhered to.