What is it about blogs? Millions of people worldwide have integrated themselves to the BLOGGER family. In which they can realax and start objecting or supporting ideas, current events, or whichever topic they feel interested in, writing it and posting it to their blog.
During my first “working Experience” this semester, I have realized that students feel left apart from society. This is why, I believe it is so important that they create their own blogs. This is helpful for them, so they can let their stress out, empower their beliefs and also because that way they can read their other classmates blogs. Throughout this semester we had to open blog accounts and every Wednesday, and whenever we wanted to, writing was our main objective. I believe this is really positive for us, and I strongly think that teachers should give their students a chance to do the same. Why? Let us remember that through writing, we can practice “writing skills”, increase our vocabulary; for example if the teacher wants to know what students think about Environment and pollution in Santiago they would need specific words which they would find in a dictionary. Also group feedback, if they read their classmates’ entries they would be able to leave a respectful and enriching post. By doing that, students will even find out more about their friends. For instance, when we had to refer to the people who we would like to have a “face to face” and meet, I was very surprised to know that Jorge liked Elvis Presley as Bernardita did.
Those are for me the advantages of using the blog in the classroom, although as there are advantages there are disadvantages. The main difficulty I can think of is that posting requires practice. This depends on the time the teacher has for each class, it’s important to inform students the goal they need to reach before every “Blog class”. That way, they will not waste the time given for each session. Last but not least, it is imperative to give students freedom in their writing, but it is necessary to supervise the contents in their blogs. Since unsupervised blogs can wind up disturbing the main idea of being creative, critical, and contributive in their own learning process.
Concluding, as long as blogs are used in a respectful and risk-free way their practice in the classroom will only benefit, as I said before, students learning processes.
