Week 3 - Engagement Activity 1
Learning to set up a blog, that was the easy bit. Adding content on the other hand, is a continuous learning experience.
When I was penning my thoughts and understanding on TPACK down in my blog, I wanted to substatiate it with some illustrations to make the entry more lighthearted. I searched for a cartoon illustration for a dog on a computer. Google search gave me plenty of options. However, I remembered the legal guidelines on copyright, and a lot of the images on the world wide web were copyrighted. I had the following options. I could,
- Email the owners to ask for permission to use their image(s)
- Pay the commercial websites a fee to use the images(s)
- Be creative and draw up my own!
The third idea, was the most appealing. I drew up a cartoon illustration on a piece of paper, used my iPhone 4 to snap a quick photo, edited the image very quickly by cropping and simply enhancing the white balance using Picasa, saved the new image, and BAM!, uploaded it on my blog.
A teacher's blog could contain learning content, summaries, reflection, that would be easy for students to access, or rather, a page of information that could be shared with the world. By modelling legal, safe and ethical guidelines, we are teaching are students not to take the easy road of simply cutting and pasting, which is too easy to do in an online and digital environment.
Not only that, blogs gives one the opportunity to be creative. The possibilities are endless. From embedding YouTube videos, to creating your own video, flow charts, online mind-maps layouts and colours, to the way the content is introduced and presented. The open ended blank canvas of a blog allows a student to dig in deep, rekindle their creativity, and promotes higher order learning and thinking. It is also more informal, lighthearted, and usually a lot more enjoyable to read than your textbook.
A blog created by the students of technology shows their capability of the digital age. The students are today probably would not have any difficulty creating a blog. Focus can be placed on content. Blogs encourages personal reflection and analysis, as well as being based on Vygotsky's social development theory, where students learn by experiences and social interactions. A blog is shared with anyone with an internet connection, and it also enables readers to leave comments, encouraging discussions and collaborative activity.
Ferdig & Trammell (2004) discuss four benefits of student blogging.
- Blogs helps students become "experts" in the subject matter through online research,
- Increases students interest and ownership in learning,
- It gives students more chances to participate and
- It provides opportunities for diverse perspectives both in and out of the classroom.
That being said, there are a few inevitable disadvantages of using blogs in teaching. Emails today, are seen as "too slow". Text messages through smart phone is the new way of connecting with each other. With this need for instant replies, a blog might not be effective in that way as one is unable to get comments and views instantly. The time gap in the conversation could be anything from a few seconds to many years. The style of writing in a blog is also a lot less formal than that of an essay. It could lead to short forms and slangs being used too often, and students forgetting to use appropriate language and syntax.
This is a terrific slideshow displaying the advantages and disadvantages of a blog.
To sum things up, a blog can involve many different types of intelligences (Howard Gardner, 1975). Creating a blog would benefit a wide range of learners. From kinaesthetic, linguistic, logical, intrapersonal and visual learners, a blog encompasses all these. As individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, we need to adapt to our environement, engage in different forms of learning to engage our Digital Natives (Prensky, 2001) of today.
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