Blogging as an Instructional Tool

When it comes to teaching there can be benefits from lecturing to a class so as people can listen to what is being taught and take their own notes on the topic, but there seem to be more when it comes to blogging when compared to other methods.

When a student is required to blog and find information on topics on their own it helps them to develop the ability to weed out poor sources on topics and find important and relevant information on their own. Once this information is found, the students would then need to find a way to make their blog posts informative in their own way without stealing their information. This makes the student read thoroughly and gain a better understanding of what is trying to be taught because they can find the information from many different sources instead of just a lecture or video. The use of many sources also helps because it gives the student a chance at practicing the ways of properly citing their sources as not to steal copyright information or plagiarize. Once the student has found a way to organize their thoughts, they have to type everything out in their post which leaves it open for comments and criticism on the topics mentioned in their post. These comments can help them understand further what was trying to be taught (if they missed the mark on what they should have really found) and can also help them to figure out what to look for next time and/or how to write better posts in the future.

While yes, lectures can be informative, they seem to drag on for most and professors or lecturers tend to lose their audiences attention due to people becoming bored or antsy while being forced to sit and pay attention for longer periods of time. With this being said, blogging provides people an opportunity to find necessary information on their own and also does so in an interesting way and can even present the information in several different ways which will help to keep people interested in the topics as well as keep basic attention to what needs to be done.

Personally, I prefer blogging over a classroom setting, because while yes, the classroom provides the direct connection between students and professors, I find myself as one of those people that loses interest in a topic over time, but if I have to blog about something, I find it exciting that I have to find my own resources and actually read about topics through articles or journals and learn that way instead of through a presentation or lecture. It gives me more freedom and provides my own learning experience in a way that I know works for me, without providing the stress of losing attention and possibly missing something important. Going out and finding my own information and reading articles that relate to topics mentioned provide a better understanding of what was intended to be learned instead of just being fed facts and information. Reading articles and talking about how they relate or writing about them in my own terms helps to make the information stick and make it make more sense to me in the long run.