Module 2 Reflection

As the educational focus continues to move from a teacher-centered to learner-centered environment, the need for self-assessment, collaboration, and alternate assessments becomes more prevalent. One web tool that can help in these areas is blogging.

According to the Educause article 7 things you should know about...Blogs, blogging is "an online, chronological collection of personal commentary and links." The article talks about both positive and negative aspects of blogging in education.

The Pros:

• allows people to share knowledge, reflect on their experiences, and debate about topics.
• provides an way for uncensored expression, reaction, and connection.
• fosters the building of community, collaboration, and peer-evaluation.

The Cons:

• may be biased or contain inaccurate information based on the views of the individual poster.
• copyright and intellectual property issues could arise.
• highly volatile making archiving and indexing difficult.
• time-limited relationship of students to the institution may result in hosting issues.

Although blogging may have its pros and cons, there may be some validity in using it as an assessment tool. The paper entitled Edublogs as an online assessment tool states blogs can be used to "encourage collaborative learning and provoke higher order thinking skills." Because blogs can be viewed by peers, learners are able to "compare their knowledge and comprehension level" with those of their classmates. According to the article, another feature with blogs is the ability of classmates, teachers, and the originator to ask additional question leading to greater cognitive information processing. This allows for greater comprehension.

I think there is great potential in the use of blogs in education. The ability for students to take control of their education through a creative outlet is exciting to say the least. Student, especially the digital natives thrive in the world of technology and can often be better engaged through the use of technologies such as blogging. Blogs allow these learners to demonstrate their knowledge and comprehension of a topic through a creative outlet. Through individual postings, a teacher to able to provide formative assessment of student learning. Over the course of time, a teacher is able to provide summative assessment by looking at all of the postings as a whole.