Blog Reflections as Journals

This activity enables you to go back and see your thoughts about what you have learnt previously. I have not completed a blog before, so with this activity I have learnt how to set up a blog and add new posts, which I can now take with me when I am a teacher so I feel less like a ‘digital immigrant’ (Prensky, 2001) by knowing how to create a blog.

By doing blog reflections as a journal, it is a way of documenting learning and collecting information for self analysis (Armstrong, Berry). Get the students to do a series of blog reflections creating a journal of what they have learnt and thought about throughout the week. Critical reflection on experiences allows teachers to develop a deep understanding of themselves and their students (Yang, 2009). At the end of the week or unit, students can go back and look at what they thought about certain aspects of the lessons to keep it fresh in their minds. Blogs allow people to exchange information without space and time constraints, to broaden their knowledge and to meet personal needs and interests at the same time (Yang, 2009). Students can write their reflections in their blog and other people can provide feedback which will allow the students to look further into their reflection, to see if there is another way of looking at something and may result in further research.

Constructivism plays a fundamental part in this activity as journals provide a way of capturing part of what is in the mind of a learner and their responses to experience (Armstrong, Berry). Students will reflect on the work they have previously experienced.

Writing blogs as a journal is a reflective piece of writing, using cognitivism. Blogs are a good way for teachers to get students to use computers in the classroom. By using a technique that will engage the students, the students are more likely to retain information for longer. As blogs are reflective, positive reinforcement is used more often than negative reinforcement as it is the student’s opinions.

Information is continually being acquired and the ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital (Siemens, 2005). Learning is a process that connects different resources such as prior knowledge, experience, perception and reality. Blogs are just that, connecting previous information with new information to write a blog which is a reflective piece of writing.

Blogs encourage interaction among students and between teachers and students with varying backgrounds and knowledge level about computers and blogs. Blog reflections as journals can support e-learning, as it is an online, scaffolded, collaborative discussion. Some pluses for blogs supporting e-learning include it being easy to use, they are online journals that users can continually update online and in their own words (Matheson, 2004). There is no need to install any software as it is already on most computers and the user has control over how blogs look. It can make use of other internet resources for learning, by adding hyperlinks within blogs (Godwin-Jones, 2003).  Using blogs the learner needs to articulate the connection between new information and what they already know (Fulwiler, 1987). One thing that may be a problem for some students posting blogs is that other people may comment on their blogs and upset the student.

References

Armstrong, A. and Berry, M. (n.d) School of Art, Design and Communication, RMIT University

Fulwiler, T. (1987). The Journal Book. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Matheson, D. (2004). Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: Some trends in online journalism. New Media & Society, 6 (4), 443–468.

Prensky, (2001)

Yang, S.-H. (2009). Using Blogs to Enhance Critical Reflection and Community of Practice. Educational Technology & Society,

12 (2), 11–21.