Blog Reflection

 

My personal opinion of what the definition of a blog should be is derived from the research I did on blog sites for this assignment.  To me a “Blog” is an electronic diary of a person’s thoughts and opinions.  These opinions could be simply their perception, or they could be supported by facts gathered during research.  But, the major difference in a blog versus a diary is that a diary is typically written in chronological order and a blog appears in reverse chronological order with the newest post appearing first.

            A “glog” is a representation of images, video, and audio used to create an interactive, Web-based poster on a virtual canvas. (Basically it is a graphic blog of mostly pictures.)  A “vlog” is a type of blog which uses video, and is often compared to web television.  A “discussion board” is an on line forum where multiple people make posts and other individuals can reply to those posts.  I would think that Face Book is an example of a publicly used discussion board dedicated to enjoyment.  Discussion boards used for education are a good resource for asynchronous learning and support the on line learning platform and varied schedules of the students.   My belief is that a big difference between a blog and the previously mentioned platforms is that it can be solely written text (if you want it to be) and it can be set to be “viewed only” by anyone except the author.  In that situation it is similar to an on line book and is “read only”.  As for the differences between blogs and a regular website, the major differences that I see are that blogs are updated regularly, and blogs are displayed in reverse chronological order. 

            My research of blogging sites included WIX.com, Word Press.org, Word Press.com, Weebly.com, Blogger.com, and Blogster.com.  Several of these sites have free blog options with a limit on resources provided.  I ran into issues with WIX and Word Press.com.  Word Press.org is specifically for someone who has their own server to host a blog on, so that was not an option for me.  Blogster.com had a decent tutorial to help beginners like me, but in the end I chose Blogger.com.  Blogger.com has a great help section which has proved to be invaluable in getting started with my beginning blog.  The one thing I missed in Blogger.com that I liked from WIX.com was the WIX site is a WYSIWIG format.  What You See Is What You Get lets you see what your blog looks like without switching to another page to see the finished product.

            As a learner I feel that using a blog affords me the opportunity to be myself and post my opinions.  Five people can look at an assignment and come up with five separate opinions on how to proceed to complete the task.  Blogs are not a rigid source of information as many web pages are.  If I performed a search on affordances of a blog, I could receive a plethora of information and that information would not necessarily be consistent from source to source.

            Using a blog as a learning tool is a technology I had not considered prior to this assignment.  I require my students to maintain an engineering notebook (diary) of what they do daily in class.  A student blog/vlog would be an excellent substitution for writing in a paper journal.  Students could video or take pictures while developing their projects and embed that into their blog for enhanced understanding for the audience.  As a teacher I worry about my students not getting instruction when I am out of school for illness.  A blog or vlog would be an excellent way of conveying detailed instruction to my students if I am unavailable.  I could embed a video of me teaching a lesson or use an existing YouTube video to enhance the written instruction.  Using a blog as a teaching tool could transform my classroom in ways I had not thought of prior to this.