Comments On Using Blogs for Education

I think that using blogs in the classroom can be very helpful to the educational process. While I believe this, I also have many reservations about using blogs for education. To use blogs, one must have the availability of both a computer and the internet at home. Yes, we do live in a technological society where mostly everyone has the availability of both a computer and the internet at home, but there are still some families that either don't have a computer, or they don't have access to the internet. This only makes it harder on low-income families to get their children a good education. Some families cannot afford to buy a computer, or spend money every month on the internet when they are more worried about feeding their kids or paying the mortgage on their house.

With that said, blogs could have some use in the classroom for educational purposes. Teachers could post assignments online, remind students about special events, and foster communication outside the classroom environment. It would also allow students to express themselves in a way that everyone can see and unique to them. Teachers would also be able to express themselves, interact with each other, and close the gap of distance between a teacher and their students.

With blogs the way they are now, using them in the classroom could be a waste of time. Using them for classroom activities could be fine, but actually using them in class would take away the point of having a teacher. Nothing is better for a student than to have personal interaction with a teacher, and using blogs in the classroom would take away from that interaction.

I respond by saying that blogs are still a new thing, and must be monitored closely when used in a classroom setting. Like any other thing, using a blog has both positive and negative consequences.

Blogging would be an effective tool for journals and creative writing assignments, and would save massive amounts of paper by posting online, and using wikispaces for handouts would enable students to work on their homework anywhere their is an internet connection. Using blogs would also enable the teacher to help students from their own home whenever a student needed help, without having to actually go anywhere.