Someone mentioned blogs being used as a means of social networking. Personally, I have never seen blogging as a popular form of social networking. I have always seen it as more of a way to share thoughts and ideas with other people. Facebook on the other hand is much easier for people to communicate compared to blogs. It is set up the way it is to make interacting with others online so simple. In order to prevent blogging from becoming a social activity, I am going to lay down my expectations of students when using blogs if I decide to use them in the classroom. I will not mind if students are commenting one another back and forth if what they are talking about is relevant to the blog. I will not accept students leaving comments asking one another what they are doing on the weekend! That is abusing the use of blogs for education purposes. I honestly think enforcing rules created when using online tools is crucial......students must be monitored very careful because I am sure they are going try to find ways to try and use the blogs the way they would like. Always teach online safety and netiquette!!
Please feel free to add anything or share any thoughts you have!! :)
I think I was the one who raised the comparison between blogging & social networking. I did so because I'm ignorant about Facebook except to understand that it's very popular. Your explanation was helpful for me to differentiate.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that students should not be using blogs to communicate about something that has no relevance to the blog. Bloggers could use Facebook to advertise their blog site link, but besides that educational blogs should remain educational.
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