Notes about Blogs

A "blog" or Weblog is a tool that gives your average user a place to voice their musings, opinions, ideas, and analyses of just about anything.  Some bloggers will allow others to comment on blogs so as to create an asynchronous conversation about the blog post.

I lump blogs into two categories - personal and education-related, though they are not mutually exclusive.

I see personal blogs as being about one's personal life, hobbies, interests, etc.  For example, I have a cousin who blogs about living in a small house, a friend who blogs about WWOOFing.  My boss is blogging about her adventures in her RV.  I have a co-worker who blogs about everything from politics, human rights, genealogy, and philosophy.  Often these blogs are used to keep friends and distant family up-to-date with their thoughts and actions.  Is this something I see myself doing?  Absolutely not.  Although, when I retire, do something blog-worthy and have the time to write about it, perhaps.

Education-related blogs can mean several things.  A teacher might be blogging about her classroom experiences in an effort to share her ideas, lessons, and student outcomes with others.  A teacher might have a classroom blog for his students to develop their thinking.  Students might create blogs as part of a class so they can synthesize, reflect and publish thoughts as they move through a unit, or the year.  I can think of so many more ways to use blogs in a classroom than in my own personal life - the possibilities are limited only by time, budget and available technology.  I believe that before you can use it effectively in your classroom, you have to experience it in some form or fashion.  When learning about design, you have to learn good design from bad - the same applies to blogs.  You have to learn good blogging from bad.  You have to learn to use the software before you can teach it and you have to figure out your expectations before you can set them.