UNEDITED SAMPLE FEATURE ARTICLE
By Vicson Aypa Mabanglo
IV-Sir Isaac Newton
Blogs, formally “weblogs”, are now usual in the Internet environment. In 1997 Jorn Barger coined the word Weblog to describe a site that combined links, commentaries, personal thoughts, journals made up of chronological entries and essays. A blog can publish texts and images to the web in an instant without any sophisticated technical knowledge. Blogs have provided people to present and express themselves online.
The collective community of all blogs is known as the “blogosphere” (Wikipedia, 2008). Large part of the community is made up of adolescents (Huffucker, 2004). A visit to the statistics page of Livejournal.com indicates that adolescents, mostly ranging from 17 to 24 years of age, are responsible for the high population of bloggers. Since blogs seem so popular with the youth, it is hard to ignore the implication that it can be use for educational technology. Blogging is about, first, reading. But more important, it is about reading what interests you. Blogs, nowadays, serves as the portfolios and online journals of the youth, students.
Weblogs are great tools for learning. Either an individual or a group can make Blogs. Blogs promote self-expression and creativity. No wonder, blogs nowadays are used for educational purposes. Blogs are reshaping our environment. They provide a communication space that teachers can utilize with students whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom (Peter Scott, Internet Librarian 2001). Blogging requires teachers to teach students to critically engage media. It is the “virtual extension of the classroom”. It allows the student to gain information through the most influential form of mass media today, the Internet.
According to Edublog, a community of bloggers that host a number of blogs for teachers and students, blogs provide a space for sharing opinions and learning in order to grow communities of discourse and knowledge — a space where students and teachers can learn from each other. Blogs help learners to see knowledge as interconnected as opposed to a set of discrete facts. They can give students a totally new perspective on the true meaning of one’s point of view. They foster ownership and choice. Blogging provides the possibility of connecting with experts on the topic students are writing. The interactive nature of blogging creates enthusiasm for writing and communication. Blogging engages students in conversation and learning. Blogging provides the opportunity for students to learn and to write for life-long learning. Blogging affords teachers the opportunity to teach responsible public writing. (Edublog, 2008)
Not surprisingly, blogging, has been viewed as a public form of journalism, giving anyone who wishes the opportunity to comment on events of the day. As of now, different schools and universities internationally, are offering added courses in blogging to their curricula. One of the first universities who added blogging as a course is the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Communication. A teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey, known as Professor Richardson, uses blogs for both his journalism and literature class too. In his journalism class, students collect news stories to write about and then edit each other’s work. In his literature class, students comment and critique class readings. For Richardson, blogs allow his students to be more aware of their writing and their audience (Kennedy, 2003) (Huffucker, 2004).
A teacher from Makati Science High School in the Philippines applies almost the same technique as Richardson’s. Mr. Alixander Haban Escote is a high school teacher and adviser of The Makati Science Vision, which is one of the best school newspapers in the Philippines. He maintains four blogs and uses these blogs to interact and teach his students. He uses the blogs to publish quizzes and other written activities. He also uses the blogs to display and publish articles of his students. He uses the blogs as tools to enhance his student not only grammatically but also socially through commenting on other’s works that were published on the same blog.
Wilfredo Basa Fang, one of his students, stated, “The blogs let us, Journalism and Print Media students, to be updated instantly. And at the same time, we can have our lessons from this blog and search more related examples in the web.”
Blogging really enhances one’s capability of doing a certain task. It strengthens one’s focus in learning new things from what he is doing.
“I can say that the information and other announcements are easily accessed and can be read or known in just a click. Its easier than the copy-in-the-manila-paper tradition.” said Marie Juliebeth Monge, also one of his students, supporting the idea of using blogs in education.
The blogosphere has really given rise to what is sometimes referred to as “citizen journalism” where a blogger can assume the role of a journalist by giving his or her views on issues and concerns. It must be stressed that not all blogs can be considered journalistic outputs, in the same way that not all bloggers are journalists ( Arao, 2006, p.3).
Through blogs, people can communicate. Through blogs, people can express their thoughts freely. Through blogs, people can learn. Through blogs, people can teach.
REFERENCES:
Eric M. Wiltse (2004) Blog, Blog, Blog: Experiences with web logs in journalism classes from http://banners.noticiasdot.com/termometro/boletines/docs/marcom/comunicacion/utexas/2004/utexas_blogs.pdf
Danilo Araña Arao (September 25, 2006) The Practice of Online Journalism in the Philippines: Personal Observations from http://www.dannyarao.com/files/arao-onlinejournalism.pdf
Blogs in Education (2008) from http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/weblogs/
The Educational Value of Blogging (June 25th, 2008) from http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tips/blogging-blogging-tips/educational-blogging/
Robert Niles (2005) The importance of blogging in journalism education from http://www.ojr.org/ojr/robert/931/
Edublog Insights (January 17, 2007) Rationale for educational blogging from http://anne.teachesme.com/2007/01/17/rationale-for-educational-blogging/
David Huffacker (March 15, 2004) The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/huffaker/
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