So far, I see that there are may pros to using blogs. However, I find that I have so little time (teaching full time and part time after school, taking 2 graduate classes, trying to keep up with house work and make time for my husband and dog, and to top it off I am in my third trimester of my first pregnancy which makes me feel exhausted all the time) to devote to keeping a blog and writing somehting actually valuable that someone else would feel the need to read.
Since we have been researching blogs and sharin ghtem with each other in class, I have found that keeping a blog means tha tyou really have to have something important to say. You have to be able to write something that will resonate with others or reach others on a personal level, in order to have an audience. I believe that maintaining a blog about your profession is a great way to communicate with others, vent about work issues, and just to share important information that will be useful to others in you field. You can create relationships through blogs and find others that support you in times of need or when you may want advice about a particular situation. You can also reach a large group of people through blogging.
With that said, there are also some cons to blogging. As I mentioned before, a blog can be completely ineffective if the author does a bad job of updating it or just does not have anything great to say. For that reason, it may be difficult to find a blog that can be used as a valuable tool. Furthermore, if you are not good at updating your blog, chances are you are going to lose readers.
Overall, I believe that a blog takes a lot of time and effort to keep up. If I were to create one, I would probably start by making one that is personal, for friends and family, to update them about whats going on and share pictures, rather than to create one that is professional because I know that I do not have the time right now to keep up with one as much as I would like to for that purpose. For a blog that is "just for fun" I think it takes a little pressure off of trying to post each day or week and is more for just a social tool and to keep in touch.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There are many pro's and con's to using blogging as an educational tool. Still I think that since this experience I think that the pro's far outweigh the con's. Being able to communicate at any time with a classmate or teacher is of great value to me. As long as there is some kind of theme or writing process for the class makes it worthwhile. Just writing things in a blog with no real purpose seems a waste of time. I have learned a great deal from this class about blogs and all of this information will make me a better blogger for future students and in my personal life. After this experience I think I will participate in blogs more.
ReplyDeleteWhen discussing the con's I think the most important thing is participating in a blog that has some structure. Because blogs take additional time if you don't really have anything to say about the topic presented. You spend most of your time trying to make up something to say, especially if part of your grade is connected to how many times you participate in the blog discussion. I have to admit after it taking so long for me to get connected to this class blog I didn't have a lot to say about the experience that was good. I did however enjoy reading the thoughts of my group members especially those that had experience with blogs in the past. It is good to check in with a blog to make sure that you haven't miss something during class, but if you don't have anything to say and you are forced to do so, it takes all the fun out of it.