Blogs in Education

1) In my search using the key words “Educational Blogs” on 3 different engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo), I received very similar results. The same website (educational.blogs.com) appeared as the number 1 hit on all 3 search engines, with various other education blog websites reoccurring as well. These search engines, especially Google and Yahoo, probably use the same database or programming, and this is why similar results occur. It can’t be by chance alone that these search engines deliver similar results.

2) Blogs are currently used in the classroom in very interesting ways. They are very innovative in their own right, since anybody in the class can access them at anytime. One example of an innovative way they are used in classrooms is web journals. Students can either write a journal, or turn in assignments via blogs, and students can access them for response. Teachers can also get them for grading and assessment purposes. Blogs are also being used as collaborative journals as well, where students can create blogs resembling a newspaper and add photos along with various articles or entries.

3) RSS readers are programs called aggregators which take news articles from various websites and consolidate it into one simple form. You can use these on, your computer mainly, but are also used in podcasts, blogs, and other formats. These can be used in many ways, but the most common way is being read as a single new post. These aggregators reduce time by consolidating similar and various news articles into one single post for easy access.

4) Blogging in K-12 classrooms will have a huge impact on education because we are continuing to move into incorporating technology into the classroom. This shift is a continuous move into the technological era that we are currently in, and it is becoming an all around accepted societal education tactic. No matter what discipline one is in, technology and blogs may be used as an interactive learning tool for research and discussion. Blogs are only increasing in popularity, so it is important to get with the times and start thinking of ways to incorporate them into instruction.

5) Pros:

-Blogs are useful in discussion and interaction between students, as well as teachers.

-RSS readers save lots of time by consolidating news articles into one form for an easy update on current issues.

Cons:

-By using blogs, students might write as if they were in a chatroom and not write with proper structure and grammar.

-RSS readers won't be as thorough as a single article which will be focused on a specific issue (if one wished to go further in depth on an issue).