I always thought of blogging as a creative pastime, or an online journal. I had never really considered it an educational tool until now.
In Adrian Miles’ ‘Blogs in Media Education’ (2006) he discusses blogs being more useful for education than taking down written notes, or typing in a word document. Blogging is a great way to systematically categorise your notes and learning, and to recall what you have learnt later on.
The use of categories and tagging on blogs makes it easy to remember just exactly what topics you have already covered. It also makes collecting academic quotes and resources far easier. Last semester for Australian Cinema I used a blog to collect quotes and ideas from reading in order to easily locate them later on for assessments.
Miles suggests that blogs are useful to:
“Support reflective and process based learning, to nurture peer support and learning, to provide a record of achievement, in assisting ideas and collaboration, and…developing multiliteracies that allow participation in contemporary information ecologies as creators (2006)”.
I wholeheartedly agree with the entirety of this list, and very much look forward to reading my peers’ blogs and getting feedback on my blog. The interactive nature of the blog aligns with my creative, lateral style of learning so I can’t wait to see what the semester brings, and how my learning will benefit!
Great TED talk on how blogging creates networks and a friendlier world!
