To Blog or Not to Blog…That’s Educations’ Question

(This blog seems quite approriate as I'm currently attending a Blackboard Users' conference.)

Blogging caught on pretty fast. People use it in place of online journals. Marketers use it to spread the news of their product or service. Businesses use it to counteract bad things that are said about them on other blogs and to get a step up on their competition. Traditional media uses it to keep up with online competition, even hiring bloggers to write for their traditional media publications. Educators use it for…well, what do educators use it for? Is there any real reason to use blogging as an educational tool? Does it provide a better education for students than any of its predecessors, such as websites, email, or online journals? What is the blogs’ role in education?

According to some bloggers, there are plenty of ways educators should not use blogs. For example, James Farmer is creating a “what not to do when using blogs in education” list. Farmer is a consultant, writer, technologist, and teacher living in Australia. He believes blogs should not be used to replace other tools that have found effective educational niches for themselves, including “discussion boards, listservs, or learning management systems” (http://blogsavvy.net/how-not-to-use-blogs-in-education). So, if blogs aren’t a replacement for other online technologies, how can they best be used in education, online or classroom?

Through your comments, I’d like to share with the readers some of the best blog sites that are educational in nature. Here’s one that I’ve found. The author’s information on digital storytelling and blogs is quite interesting. Feel free to post links to other blogs related to education that you particularly like when you post a comment to this blog.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Middle school children today think about careers and what they want to be when they grow up just as they did in the previous generation. It's part of the tradition of our educational system. But is it a responsibility of the school system, or should parents and these children's potential employers be handling this kind of education for today's middle-school-age children? For those of you reading this who are already in the work force, do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up? Did this kind of middle school education help you choose your future career?

While it doesn't answer these questions, this streaming video from the Internet Archives (www.archive.org) shows middle school children from the 1970s learning about possible vocations. It might help you remember those days, particularly if yours were as far away as mine sometimes feel. :-)

Here's the link: http://www.archive.org/stream/WhenYouG1973/WhenYouG1973_256kb.mp4

Will online learning be a thing of the past?

As one of the questions posted this week for the students in the "Blogs: New Independent Media" class that I'm taking is about what technology will be like in the future, I thought this blog entry I found to be particularly interesting. So, I thought I'd share it with you. About five years ago it's author published a list about the future of online learning. He's reviewed that list in this blog so we can judge for ourselves just how accurate he was. It's kind of interesting. But if he can be right, then we students have a good chance of seeing our predictions come true as well.

Here's the link to the Technlearning Blog of Feb. 21, 2006: http://www.techlearning.com/blog/main/archives/2006/02/classroom_of_th.html;jsessionid=P13S2OHO1XMN2QSNDBCCKHSCJUMEKJVN