I am going to be honest and admit that when we were first told that this course was mostly assessed through blogs I was a little surprised and confused. We are so used to being told to sit down with a pen and paper and write an essay, that the idea of sharing our thoughts and new findings in such a public sphere seems really out there.

Upon reading Adrian Miles’ article about Blogs in Media Education, I have to one hundred per cent agree with him in that a process such as this seems much more applicable to the work force that we are one day aiming to step into.

By writing an essay- using a static formula that we all now know like the back of our hands, and simply handing it in to a teacher who is, let’s be honest, probably very sick of reading them, we can learn nowhere near as much as we can by using a blog. Being able to access the work of others and soak in their ideas can be unbelievably valuable and using blogs allows us to do this.

Blogging is also likely to be a crucial skill in years to come in which we are searching for employment. Already when applying for jobs in PR and marketing I have been asked how tech-savvy I am and whether I can create Facebook pages, Instagram and Twitter accounts and blogs. Not once have I been asked how good I am at writing essays.

Unless we are looking to become academics, blogging seems a much more practical skill to have than essay writing, and I think that most of us have written enough of essays for the formula to be stuck with us for life anyway.