Benefit s of Blogging

By Kristen Anderson
 Engaging Students
— Today's students are tuned into technology and may
balk at journal-writing, but will be excited by the
opportunity to create a blog
— Class blogs can foster a community of learners
— They can be used to inform students of class
requirements, post handouts, notices, and
homework assignments 
— They are powerful tools to enable differentiated
instruction or mentoring to occur
— Blogs can motivate students, especially those who
otherwise might not become participants in
classrooms

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 Promotes Literacy
— Excellent opportunities for students to read and
write
— More effective than journaling since blogging
lets students interact with their peers quickly
— Students who read more, read better: students
who write more, write better
— Students read more when more texts are
available
— Sites such as Project Gutenberg publish classics
online for anyone to read, free of charge

 Empowering
— Gives all students a voice, especially those who may
be quiet and shy about speaking aloud in a
classroom setting
— Print-based companies decide who gets published
and when, thus the potential for elitism and
censorship is great
— With blogging, everyone has a voice and can be
heard, even if their ideas are controversial
— Blogging insures open access for all readers and
writers
— Blogs give students the opportunity to communicate
with peers from all over the world and to receive
immediate feedback for their ideas

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 Discussions
— Provides opportunities for students to discuss topics
outside of the classroom
— Classroom time is limited and all students may not have
the opportunity to question a quest speaker or respond
in a class debate. Blogs give teachers/students the
opportunity to continue the learning outside the
classroom
— Blogs are equalizers as every person has an equal
opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions
— Students have time to think and react to ideas before
responding
— Educators can assemble a group of knowledgeable
individuals from all over the world to help students
explore a topic and communicate their findings

 Collaboration
— Teachers and students can work on developing skills
outside the classroom
— Instructional tips can be posted
— Students can practice and benefit from peer review
— Opportunities for online mentoring: a class of older
students can help a class of younger students
solve a multistep math problem
— Encourages cooperative learning activities that
require students to share research findings, ideas,
or suggestions


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 Sharing Information
— Blogs give learning and research organizations
the opportunity to share information
— An example being Science Commons that serves
the advancement of science by removing
unnecessary legal and technical barriers to
scientific collaboration and innovation (Fryer,
2006)
— Built on the promise of Open Access to scholarly
literature and data, Science Commons hopes
to one day combine their publishing, data,
and licensing approaches to develop solutions
for a truly seamless research process (Fryer,
2006)
 Cost
— School budgets are growing increasingly tighter
and blogging is an inexpensive yet valuable
teaching tool
— Textbooks are not cheap and replacing out-of-
date books is a never-ending expense
— Open digital content is designed to offer
information to all learners, free of charge
— Subscriptions to print journals is exorbitant and
places a huge strain on library budgets
—
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Access to Information Free
of Charge
— Provides current and reliable information,
example being: WikiPedia
— In 2005, Nature magazine compared the
information in WikiPedia to that of
Encylopedia Britannica, and found “among 42
entries tested, the difference in accuracy was
not particularly great: the average science
entry in Wikipedia contained around four
inaccuracies; Britannica, about three” (Fryer,
2006)
— Internet Archive has the motto “Universal Access
to Human Knowledge” (Fryer, 2006)
—
 User-Friendly Technology
— Easy to use since online sites like blogspot.com
make creating and maintaining blogs simple
and quick
— Blogs are flexible in design, convenient, and
easily accessible via home or library
computers.
— Blogs provide easy access to free information
and knowledge, and example being MIT’s
Open Courseware project (http://ocw.mit.edu)
supports this ethos as “a free and open
educational resource (OER) for educators,
students, and self-learners around the world”
(Fryer 2006).
 Student Portfolios
— Blogs provide opportunities for students to create
digital portfolios
— Students can review their older work and see the
progress they have made
— When students realize their efforts will be published,
they are more motivated to produce better writing
— Teachers and peers may conference with a student
individually on a developing work
— Advice from experts and/or peer mentors can be
easily kept for future reference

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 How to Use a Classroom
Blog
— History lesson: Immigration and the development of
the USA

— Study how the United States was built on the

contributions of all the immigrants who relocated
here

— Have students use free genealogy web sites to trace

their ancestors and create a classroom blog about
their family history

— Study US immigration policies and promote online

discussion about how current policies would have
effected their ancestors efforts to relocate to
America
 How to Use a Classroom
Blog cont.
— Relate the history lesson to current events and help
students become global citizens by creating a blog
designed to help the victims of the recent
earthquake/tsunami in Japan
— Students could communicate with other schools and
encourage all students to contact their
Congressmen to introduce/pass legislation
designed to offer visas to Japanese citizens who
wished to relocate, temporarily or permanently, to
the US
— Teach students how the US could have helped save
thousands of lives by revising their immigration
policy before/during WWII

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 Works Cited
— Fryer, W.A. (2006, September 17). Integrating
technology in the classroom: the ethic of open
digital content. Retrieved from
http://www.wtvi.com/teks/06_07_articles/ethic-open-digi
— McGraw-Hill Companies. (2010). Blog basics.
Retrieved from
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/blog-ba
— Selingo, J. (2004, August 14). In the classroom, web
logs are the new bulletin boards. New York Times,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E5

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