This essay argues that blog can  and will play an significant role in network literacy. Blog is a platform which requires sophisticated network literacy. This is what a media student needs exactly. So blogging can achieve this outcome for media students and education in a appropriate and considerable way.

what is a blog? Based on Miles Adrian, a blog is a publication based on web. It is made up by consists of entries of different lengths, shorter ones and long ones. usually shorter ones are more normal. A blog usually has a author, a title and a date of publishing. They appear in the form of posts and in reverse chronological order. Also, all blogs are free for readers to leave a notes about individual posts.

Why use a blog? First, blog is not the replication of print literacy which students are familiar with. It might be closer to ‘post print-literacy’. Learning how to blogging successfully is a long process. It takes a long time to develop well. Secondly, the intention of using a blog is not connected well with the learning process. Then students will thought that blogging is just some work they must finish and cannot apply it into real work. Blogs have variety of advantages like supporting peer work and communication, providing a record of study process, encouraging creative ideas of your own and so on. It just make you be the creators instead of just consumers.

Blogs are like journals, they both can keep a record of ideas, reflections, activities and so on. However they have differences too. The most obvious one is that blog is a public document, and it gets readers. So what you write needs to be considered well and makes sense for other readers. So blogging requires more consideration and clarification than a personal diary. The second difference is that once your words is in public, it will have some comments about it. You will interact with others in a bigger community with others. And you will realize that you are making a contribution to the bigger community. You will also read other’s blogs and have more interactions.

The use of blog develops the use of category. ‘Blog support the use of categories, which are keywords that can be applied to individual post, and each category has its own archive within the blog.’

Contemporary media students requires a range of literacies about internet and digital technologies. Blogging require students to publish digital photos, audio and video via their blogs, and to write and explore practices that are relevant to present networked platform.

Reference:

Miles, Adrian. “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.” Australian Screen
Ed.41 (2006): 66-9