Blogs or short for web logs are like a diary on the web. In its simplest form, one can write your daily adventures, archive recipes, or even jot down your travel adventures for friends to follow while on your journey. In the movie, Julie and Julia!, Julie Powell, a writer with a boring job in a call center in NY, decides to cook all 524 of Julia Child’s recipes in a year. She blogs her way through this challenge and experiences while cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She chronicles her emotional ups and downs as her life intertwines with Julia Child’s. The powerful aspect of this is that Julia Powell’s followers on her blog are able to “live” this experience through her and respond back to her through her blog. This interaction makes the challenge real for Julie—people cheer her on and give her tips. She creates a learning relationship with her community and eventually becomes a published author.
As demonstrated in the film, blogs are used for almost any subject matter. It creates a niche audience based on the subject matter. Two wellknown services are www.blogger.com and www.livejournal.com. I created a blog on blogger.com to publish my writing from this doctorate program. My intent is to have a repository of my writings so that I can reflect on my writings later.
The difference I see in blogging on the Sakai forums is that these e-learning platforms are available to use only while we are in school. Blogging has been described as a key e-learning tool by educators because students can use it anytime.It is a student centered learning environment. It forms a connectivity for the students because they are able to respond back to comments and interact with their peers. It is similar to the forums in that it develops the students critical thinking skills because they must be able to read and write, discuss and argue and even collaborate on projects through the blogs. Commenting on blogs give the student a validation that there is indeed an audience to his or her writing. It creates excitement when the student receives feedback—an exciting element of blogging versus writing your thoughts on paper. Teachers are able to expand the walls of the classroom for the students having them participate in a blog. Students are exposed to the world when comments are received from people from other countries. The interaction becomes important as students then are able to learn different viewpoints from people from other cultures.
Like any other information published on the web, there is no way to tell whether the self published information on the web is valid. However, this is true with any published media, regardless of whether it is on the web. There have been times that the media has published erroneous reports. Teachers need to have discussion about trusting everything they read on the web. Students should find out the background of the author. They frequently can figure out whether there is a bias to the authors aim for the blog by reading through their posts, finding other site links and reading the comments to their blogs.
