Blogging has quickly become the latest and greatest way to share personal opinions, with the ever-changing trends in education; a new movement is upon us, using blogs to further and foster learning. “A blog is a personal website that has content organized like a journal or a diary. Each entry is dated, and displayed on the web page in reverse chronological order, with recent entries at the top.” (Downes, 2009, para. 1)
Blogging is an excellent way for students to improve on writing, reading and critical thinking skills. It can also help the child that is shy and does not like to take part in class discussions, but has meaningful and worthwhile information to give to the lesson. If a student is able to blog their responses and not actually have to say with that are thinking out loud they might be more willing to “participate”. Blogging is another way to open up the line of communication and help enhance a student’s self confidence They will be encouraged to do their clearly express themselves because “blogging gives students a genuine and potentially worldwide audience for their work. Having such an audience can result in feedback and greatly increase student motivation to do their best work” (Downes, 2009, para. 9)
However, Downes suggests that “teachers lead by example” and should set up their own blogs to model the correct way to blog. The easiest way to do this is to start by posting assignments; this will encourage students to frequently check the blog. The next step would be to model how to appropriately respond to blogs.
Finally, blogging can be a great tool for the classroom because it helps to encourage participation, classroom management, peer interaction and critical thinking skills.
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