To Blog or Not to Blog?
August 29th, 2006 by SplineGuy
This is the title of an article in a recent edition of i.e. (interactive educator, by Smart Technologies). You can download this month’s magazine by clicking on the image. 
I was surprised at how insightful I found several of the articles in ths issue. I didn’t quite know what to expect from an article in a magazine from a technology company that is mostly interested in selling me something. The article on “To Blog or Not to Blog” was written by Wesley A Fryer, and he examines the pros and cons of incorporating student blogging. I did expect, based on the title of the article, to be reading about why or why not I should be blogging as an instructor, but he included students in the equation as well. I think the whole magazine is directed largely at K-12 educational environments, but the one thing that piqeud my interest was the idea of podcasting.
I was surprised at how insightful I found several of the articles in ths issue. I didn’t quite know what to expect from an article in a magazine from a technology company that is mostly interested in selling me something. The article on “To Blog or Not to Blog” was written by Wesley A Fryer, and he examines the pros and cons of incorporating student blogging. I did expect, based on the title of the article, to be reading about why or why not I should be blogging as an instructor, but he included students in the equation as well. I think the whole magazine is directed largely at K-12 educational environments, but the one thing that piqeud my interest was the idea of podcasting.
I thought I found a place online that maintains a list of math podcasts, but with a minor amount of effort put forth, I have not been able to locate it. I did find a couple of interesting math podcasts: www.mathgrad.com or http://www.dansmath.com/pages/podpage.html
I have listened to the first podcast of mathgrad but none of dansmath so I am not necessarily recommending them. I just want to mention that I am seriously considering the idea of incorporating the idea of an occasional podcast (audio only or video+audio) to this blog. Most likely it would focus on unusually common mistakes that arise in my lower level courses such as Algebra, Trig or Calculus.
I’ll keep you posted.
Wes Fryer’s blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity is really good. It’s one of the few web 2.0-related edublogs that consistently makes sense and contains substantive ideas. If you liked the article you’d probably like the blog too.
Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out.
In response to Wesley Fryer’s “To Blog or not to Blog”, I have to say that I agree that blogging is a useful classroom tool. As a parent, I often feel that my child’s education is limited due to the lack of diversity in her school. I believe that by blogging with others, a whole new set of ideas and opinions, formed by diversity and geography would benefit her learning. I think that it does need to be very controlled, due to the rampant numbers of people who will take advantage of others on the internet, but that with the proper training, teachers can use this tool to advance and enhance learning in their classrooms.
You said it very well. It is a wonderful concept to expose students to the rest of the world through reading blogs from a wide array of sources. I would add that, in addition to protection from predators, we simply need to be careful of the validity of the information that is being spread through the information highway. It is a great exercise for students to critically analyze the accuracy of the information they have received online. Now more than ever, we can’t believe everything we read.