In general, as you can see, the five chosen blog posts are basically about the progress I made and some thoughts on the Networked Media, also another course I study which is Narrative and Authorship Studies. Through using the blog, I am trying to keep recording my studies, and some good ideas which I might forget if do not write them down. So far, both the educational and personal use of blog have been much clearer for me than ever before.

In this essay, I will focus on few points mentioned below. First, the blog does benefit me by developing a habit of reviewing and sharing opinions with people. But still, I doubt the necessity of using blog as compulsory way to assess students and keep them writing things on it by ‘unless you don’t want to pass’. If the purpose is to make students feel and think the current network culture, there are dozens of ways to achieve. For example, watch documentaries, visit major network companies and analyze representative examples in network media history in class. Of course blog could be one of them, but making it compulsory is unnecessary and not suitable for everyone. Besides, like many others Internet products, it has its certain limitation and weakness which may mislead people or distort truth. However, in my opinion, chasing a person who is not responsible for his words in the Internet is much harder than in reality.

Firstly, what is the specific use of blog in higher education? Why using blog rather than traditional material like books or movies? This is because “Weblogs are easy to setup and administrate in contrast to other technologies, make easier to publish all types of resources (text, images, video, etc.) to the Web when compared to traditional web publishing…Instructor does not need to periodically request the learning logs to the students.” (Luján-Mora & Juana-Espinosa, 2007). Apparently, there is no lack of reason of using blog in higher education. As a modern technology, the purpose (or result you may argue) of inventing it is to offer great conveniences. And compared with the traditional materials like paper and book, it greatly saves lots of time and resource for both teacher and student, which alone could be the reason of its popularity. However, for media students, it is much more than that. Besides the features mentioned above, we shall notice and further explore its nature: the way of communication between tutors and students has been changed. There is no longer the situation that students hand in their homework written on papers and what they will receive after days are just few words as comments and that is it. Now we have blog, which enables all of us as students to post our own opinions, reflections and even suggestions on the course or teaching. Teachers will see them much more directly and give their opinions too by simply comment the blogs. This change caused by blog, in terms of communication, is much more significant than the convenience it brings.

So why I doubt it? As I wrote at the beginning of this essay, I am not arguing against the use of blog in higher education, I am arguing the necessity of making it a compulsory requirement for all the students, making ‘three relevant posts a week’ and ‘must read others blog and give your opinions’ a minimal standard. This rule may be good at pushing students to update their blogs regularly, but it would not help them understand the nature of it. As some of my classmates argued, they are just not the type of person who wants to share his stories and communicating with strangers. Are there any other ways for them to achieve the aim of this course?

Considering the limitation and disadvantages of blog, the first thing might be referred is the misuse of it. Specifically, if there is a person use offensive words in his blog on a particular group, country or race which would be considered as discrimination, what will happen on him? In real world, there are different laws in different countries relating to public discrimination. In America, there is ‘Civil Rights Act of 1964’ which ‘prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal’. So if the person said what he wrote on his blog in public, it is surely illegal in America. But how about in blog? It may be ambiguous because a blog sometime can be considered as both a personal or public place. It very much depends on the circumstance and personal understanding. It is true that everyone should be responsible for his or her words, whatever in reality or the Internet. But it is also inevitable some people do not care the rules, which pretty much thanks to the features of blog: virtuality, easy, and fast.

Back to the blog used in Networked Media, the fact is we are going to continuously use it in the rest of the semester as a part of the assignment. I will try my best to keep writing blogs and reading others as well. Besides, I would not only focus on the material relating to Network Media, but also make the blog more my personal place by adding opinions on the current affairs and the other courses I currently study.