The blogosphere as it is now called is something I’m already quite familiar with. My journey that ended up using it for education started on a personal level. My first needs for a blog began with a way to catalogue my experiences while traveling in Scotland and England – you can read them here, if you get too curious.
After my return, and during the course of my own learning experiences and epiphanies in my own life, I started using blogging as a way to keep track of all my thoughts and to reflect back on how I had evolved or changed since my posts. I had never really even thought about others reading what I had written. However, it soon became something friends looked forward to reading, and something I enjoyed writing. I then created a second blog entitled Lucid Recall where I wrote in detail all of my dreams I had. It became somewhat of a digital scrapbook of my mind and was a spiritual and self-awareness tool that had opened its doors to me.
Now, as an educator I use blogging with my students, and am currently in process of making it an integral part of my action research in my graduate level program. Blogging is not something that is easily accepted or welcomed with open arms though. As one school superintendent stated in his experience “... the lies, distortions, and mean spiritedness of some—were not worth my time or worthy of this district.” (Carr, 2006) Although it creates a wonderful opportunity for personal reflection and growth as it had for me, professionals in education might be cautious to give an open forum for public opinion, because as I always say, no one has an opinion until they are given a chance to have one.
As with any new emerging technological tool, especially dealing with social media and its ever changing, fast-paced developments, rules are not even written yet to govern how modern society deals with the etiquette of such things. Should the educational industry be cautious and wait for rules? If so we might be a bit behind in our strategies for 21st century learners – oh wait we already are. There are so many positive opportunities that can arise from blogging, whether used by an educational professional or a student like organizing class discussion, used as a portfolio assessment (as I do in my class), give students legitimate opportunities to participate, create student ownership, among many many others. (Skiba, 2005) We are currently being immersed in new social media outlets daily, a way for humans to express themselves. Instead of being cautious of the rules of what we shouldn’t expose to our students, we should be careful not to leave them or ourselves out of it.
References
Skiba, D. (2005). People of the Year: Bloggers. Nursing Education Perspectives, 26(1), 52-53. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Carr, N. (2006). To Blog Or Not to Blog. American School Board Journal, 193(11), 46-47. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.
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