BLOGS

Blogs

Blog is short for weblog. Most blogs are primarily textual however some focus on art, photographs, videos, music and audio. Blogs are personal journal entries posted in reverse-chronological order. In the 1990’s blogging was credited to Dave Winer, Jorn Barger, and Justin Hall. Winer’s Scripting News is recognized as being one of the oldest and longest running weblogs. Hall began personal blogging in 1994 as student at Swarthmore College. Barer coined the term “weblog” on 17 December 1997.

In the classroom, blogs can be a useful tool to connect individual classroom participants who ordinarily would not engage in an activity. Opportunity and willingness to read and write will increases through peer mentoring. A blog can help students process their thoughts and ideas for analysis. While perceiving new ideas student can move ahead with their thinking towards transformation in learning. New ideas are meaningful to students only when directly applied in real life contexts of practice and use. With a blog, every student has multiple opportunities to share their thoughts. An instructor can offer instructional tips and other students can as well submit comments and suggestions to an original entry.

The Virtual Classroom in Illinois teacher Mrs. Barnstable provides a basic structure however the students must take responsibility for finding and implementing feasible research and production solutions. Mrs. Barnstable’s whole theory on teaching is the students teach other students. Everybody has their own skills and they share them with everybody else in the room. Encouraging students to go to one another for help gives these students a refreshing attitude: they acknowledge when they do not know something, aren’t afraid to ask for help, and are in turn, be charitable in teaching skills they do possess. A student named Pete express the positive affect of Mrs. Barnstable’s idea of asking other students. He says, “Sometimes when a teacher explains it to you, it’s a bit confusing. But then when one of your fellow classmates explains it to you, you understand it better because they have a better sense of what you can and can not understand.” Mrs. Barnstable teaching approach is a combination of constructivism and connectivism theories. Learners experience online instruction information first-hand which gives them the opportunity to contextualize and personalize the information themselves. Furthermore, students will also be able to use the strengths of other learners, and learn from others. Allowing learners to use blogs for communication and the World Wide Web for research students can connect to others around the world according to the connectivist theory.


http://wapedia.mobi
http://wikipedia.org
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu
http://www.4teachers.org/kidspeak/barnstable