Hello World

I know it is what it says in the manual but I can't actually believe that I did it.

 

Finally I get to review this post and yes it did need a little bit of revision. Blogs are indeed useful tools and as was described in Solomon & Scrum, 2010 they encourage writers and responders to develop not only thinking skills but also analytical skills.From what is described to us in Constructivist theory is this not the real key of what we are trying to acheive.

To engage student, to deliver to them the content we are trying to teach and then to allow them to analyze that content, integrate it into their own viewpoints and then construct their own knowledge.

Blogs allow brainstorming and the posting of ideas which other persons can comment upon (Ormiston, 2010). Perhaps the greatest challenge is to get comments to be appropriate, considered and thoughtful, rather than "I really like your blog post!" There is perhaps some consideration to be made even for thsi type of comment as hopefully the responder has actually read the post first.

Blogs are quick and not indistinct from what I can gather is a personal journal, which makes sense as to why this course asks us to 'Blog' our learning journey. From my limited understanding Blogs are essentially now being replaced byTwitter which is a microblog. This is abit like a mix of text messaging and blogging.


Like it or not blogging does encourage writing and hopefully reading and even perhaps analyzing of ideas by students (Solomon and Scrum, 2010, pp19-20). Perhaps the biggest difference about all types of academic writing, from blogs and journals to essays is that with it being available to the public it encourages pride and good writing in students (Solomon and Scrum, 2010, p20) Further to that it also ensures consideration is made as to what is written and the audience that is likely to read it. This is itself in really encourage critical thinking whilst also looking at Creativity, Collaboration, Connection and Reading Skills.



I can say however that I did not enjoy the editing aspects of Blogger. Initially I was utilizing the editing tools in Blogger but was finding it rather restrictive. Later I was entering my posts into a standard Microsoft Word Documents but then to my surprise I discovered that one of the templates for Microsoft word is a Blog Post. This was a much more effective method and seemed to resolve some of the issues that I had with Blogging.



Bibliography:
Solomon, G and Scrum, L: Web 2.0: How to for Educators; 2010, Hawker Brownlow Education.

Ormiston, M: Creating a Digital Rich Classroom: Teaching & Learning in a Web 2.0 World, 2010, Hawker Brownlow Education.