Are Blogs Really Changing Education???
For our next social media class assignment, we were asked to find an educational blog. I did a quick search on blogs in education and educational blogs and found 42,900 and 95,300 results (respectively) from Google on these topics. Although these results equal more than 100,000, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see many recent posts in the top Google hits. Many of them were 2003-2006. Of course there were some recent ones too, but I was hoping for more.
One blog that I enjoyed reading was titled, Panelists: Blogs are changing education. This blog was the winner of the ‘Best of the Education Blog’ Awards. The title of the blog caught my attention because I believe it has some truth to it. Yes, I think that many faculty and teachers are catching onto the vision of using blogs in education. However, I think that although many faculty and teachers are using blogs, they may not be using them effectively in teaching. I think it goes down to the idea of “just because we have the technology, should we use it?”
I recognize the fact that blogs make people’s ideas more readily available to a wider audience. They can allow the students to view and comment on the work of their peers, whereas in the past, usually just the teachers or faculty read the assignments from the students. So, yes, blogging is important, and a quote from the article says that “The impact on blogging in teaching and learning can be profound.”
My question is how are people measuring this “profoundness” and what are some of the best ways faculty and teachers are using blogs to improve education? I hope I’m not sounding too negative. I do love technology, and I love that blogs are being used in education, I’m just questioning a little on how this impact is being measured and really want to know and hear stories of how blogs are really changing the face of education.