Since its modest days in 1998, “weblogs” or the more popularized named version “blogs” have gown incessantly every minute of the day. According to Technorati Media, a blog search engine, that indexes millions of blogs, about 175,000 new weblogs are created each day, and each second of the day 2 blogs are created making the 1.6 Million postings per day (Dube, 2007).
We liked it when blogs allowed us access to a more personal perspective of the world events, in the case of September 11th or the Afghanistan war when hundreds if not thousands of bloggers flooded the Internet telling stories about their own experiences or sharing opinions. Blogs unite readers as active participants allowing interaction and contemplation of learning. It gives the guarantee of different points of view prompting a more unabridged truth.
The popularity of blogging, the minimal technical knowledge, and the fact that all one needs is a computer an Internet connection to engage in conversation with almost anywhere in the world made inevitable that its benefits would spill into the education realm. Educators fortunately and in time, noticed the benefits blogging brings into the education as they communicate and engage the digital natives to work more collaboratively with each other. Blogging pushes students to discover new ways of thinking. It is the informality of blogs that allows them to reflect and evaluate their opinions in a better light and express it in their own voices.
In addition to providing teachers with an excellent tool for communicating with students, blogs motivates students, even those who would otherwise be too timid to contribute in a regular classroom. Blogging gives excellent opportunities for students to read and write due to the forum environment they provide for collaboration and discussion, they are powerful tools that enable scaffold learning or mentoring (Crie, 2006).
As students sit in their new English classroom and boot up their computers to start their blogs, they feel a sense of ownership and instinctively know that collaboration will enhance their own knowledge. They are more compelled to write due to the possibility that countless numbers of readers, including experts, are exposed to their writing and can give them feedback. It is this conversation that turns them from learners to teachers.
References
Crie, M. (2006). Education up close. Retrieved January 10, 2010 from: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47
Dube, J. (2007, August 7). How many blogs are there?50 million and counting. Message posted to CyberJournalist.net: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/003674.php
Beautifully written, Isabel.
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