Reflective Essay - Blogs as a Resource/Teaching Tool

One of the most important things I have learned so far in this course is that the web 2.0 tools are interactive and allow for collaboration. Blogs are an excellent example of this. People post information, thoughts and questions, which allow those who read it to respond. It allows for differing opinions. I have used the Stephen's Lighthouse blog as a resource for our library automation project. It is good to have experts in the field willing to share their knowledge. I can then take the ideas and learn from them or adapt them to make changes in the way I do things that will make learning better for my students. Blogs also work as a resource to give examples of how other people do tasks similar to the ones I do only in a different way. For example, the Book Reviews @ Caravel Academy gives examples of student book reviews. This helps me and my students to see work that students in other schools are doing. I do book reviews in my reading classes, but not in blog format. Using a blog might definitely be a more motivating way for my students to accomplish this task. I know from experience that students are far more motivated to journal using a blog than using paper and pencil. A coworker and I created an Indian Boarding School Unit for our reading classes. We used Pageflakes to organize our online materials. We had writing prompts and journal questions for them to answer. One flake on our page was a blog. Students were on task and not only answered the questions, but were excited to see their posts on the screen, were engaged in responding to other classmate's posts, and then were interested in reading what other's had to say about their posts. This is what learning should look like. In a library, I think blogs can be used to share information about books, research topics, and personal reviews. I think students can work together in a blog to discuss themes, conflict and character analysis. Students are sometimes more willing to share on a computer screen than face to face.