Educational Blogs
An educational blog or edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. It provides support, to the student of an author and to the educator, in the learning process, facilitating reflection, questioning of self and others, and collaboration, providing contexts for the exercise of higher-order thinking.
As educators perceive edublogs as useful resources, they continue to use them in schools. Blogging has grown in popularity among universities and public schools thanks to its easy-to-use architecture and the potential they offer students.
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| Educational Blogs |
Teachers creating blogs to help them better educate their students are called edubloggers. Teaching can be difficult, as teachers often have to create content for several forms of education, and edublogs allow them to share work or gain feedback from other teachers.
Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers for the purpose of classroom instruction or educational policy.
History
The historical evolution of edublogs does not differ in terms of its technical evolution and diffusion from the evolution of the blog. Although its use in the educational field is relatively recent, so we find a lack of documents that specifically show the history of educational blogs or edublogs. However, it is possible to take into account the different ways of creating a blog and take it to the educational field with different objectives.
Harvard University is one of the pioneers in using blogs within the academic field.
Objectives of the educational blog
Like any other educational tool, the blog is created to facilitate the teaching-learning process. Therefore, the main objectives for which the blog is used are the following:
- Promote linguistic competence, since comprehension and written expression are developed.
- Develop critical and reflective capacity.
- Make use of information and communication technologies in the educational field.
- Promote collaborative work through the exchange of information.
- Offer a more attractive educational method to motivate students.
General characteristics of blogs
Blogging is a social gathering where you can share your thoughts and ideas with other people who are interested in reading your thoughts. Blogging allows you to create your own website and blog, which is also called a "blog." The best feature of Blogging is that it's free. You don't need to pay for hosting services or for any software. The blog contains texts, images, and videos. Type new posts on the blog and share them on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Flickr. The most common way to create a blog is using WordPress making it possible to create blogs in different languages like English, Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese.
Likewise, it should be noted that in the blogs the annotations appear in chronological order (the most recent on top) and allow feedback. A blog requires little or no knowledge of HTML coding, or any language or program. This is something common to Web 2.0 tools.
Many free-to-use (no cost) sites allow you to create and host blogs, such as Blogger.
Types of Educational blogs
Academic Blog
Academic blogs are online educational resources that focus on teaching and instruction, as opposed to research. They offer courses, training, guidance, or tutorials aimed at a specific group such as students, educators, or parents, or aimed at any reader interested in learning.
It can be about a specific discipline or skill, or varied content.
An academic blog is normally set up and maintained with the purpose and promise (often made in the introductory post) of providing new learning opportunities for the readers who visit it.
Academic Blogs have a different purpose in the academic world. They focus on teaching and providing information to those who are interested but may not have the time or inclination to read in depth. A blog can be created using a professional editor, or by using colorful text and photos with high-resolution images.
Blog on Education
In the context of education, technological tools, namely blogs, can generate opportunities for change in teaching and learning relationships, making them more personalized, social, and flexible.
Blogs are an important communication and interaction tool, potentiating an exceptional environment for collaborative learning. Collaborative learning presupposes interaction, where the educator, while teaching, learns and questions about his practice. In the same way, the student, while learning, seeks answers to his doubts and uncertainties and therefore teaches.
This free way of teaching and learning promotes collective work, where teachers and students are using active listening skills of collaboration in order to support each other’s learning journey; therefore creating conditions for effective teaching in a dynamic global environment.
The main aim of this blog is to show that new ways of communication and teaching are arising from technological tools like blogs. We will also show how this new way of communication leads to greater collaboration, opening up opportunities for the teacher, who gets to learn together with the students.
The use of blogs to communicate with students, facilitate interaction and collaboration and allow students to learn together online, contribute to a new pedagogical model.
We use blogs as communication tools, to share knowledge and views with other people.
Blog as a pedagogical resource
As a teaching resource, the blog can present two approaches. In the first approach, one can witness its use, outside the school and often outside the school environment. The teacher uses one or more blogs created in other contexts by credible professionals, containing relevant information about the subject he teaches and presenting it as a source for students to consult.
It is essential that teachers, before indicating non-institutional blogs to students, make a careful analysis of their content. Another approach is the creation of a blog by the teacher himself or by a group of teachers where they expose the information, the work materials, the program, and the bibliographies of the subjects they teach.
In these cases, it is the teachers themselves who make the space more dynamic and the students assume a relatively passive position, confining themselves only to reading the information in the posts. They can casually make comments on some messages posted there.
Blog as a pedagogical strategy
As a pedagogical exploration strategy, the blog should be in charge of the students. The life of the blog revolves around them, which feeds it with information, illustrations and comments. They are themselves authors and co-authors of the space, the main objective is not to create conditions of access to the information posted by the teachers, but rather that the students themselves explore all their potential through the blog, developing activities that allow them to program the objectives and build competences they intend to foster and strengthen. The teacher has the role of mentor. Exploited in this way, blogs become true teaching and learning strategies, spaces to awaken in students the spirit of research, reflection, and autonomy.
Benefits for Students
Among the benefits that can be cited for students, we can consider that when well-planned, blogs in education can:
- To be an incentive to reading, writing, and critical reflection;
- Offer possibilities of interaction with other people;
- Expand curricular and technological learning;
- Promote participatory and collaborative learning;
- Being a space for the expression of creativity;
- Assist in information management skills;
- Offer a better notion of copyright.
Organization of educational blogs
To achieve the correct organization of an educational blog, it is essential to take into account aspects such as :
- Know who it is addressed to (the recipient) since most are students of different educational levels and the content must be adjusted.
- Have a purpose, that is, know what you want to transmit or teach.
- Appropriate methodology, since previously how it will be developed must be known.
- Timing, that is, previously establishing its duration.
- Place where it will be developed (location), since it is possible to work in different contexts such as home, school, etc.
- How it will be evaluated since the teacher must establish the objectives that the students must achieve through the educational blog.
Advantages of using educational blogs
The use of blogs in educational systems provides several advantages determined by the possibilities they offer us. So we could say that:
- They are an easy-to-use tool (you don't need any specific program to create them).
- The material appears in chronological or thematic order (facilitating its consultation).
- Allows the inclusion of multimedia resources (makes the information easier to understand and more attractive).
- They promote collaborative work.
- Students are encouraged to create their own material (texts, videos, images).
- It allows students who have not attended a class to obtain information about the contents covered, avoiding delays in their learning.
- They extend the educational environment outside the classroom.
- They are a tool that enables communication with the entire educational community.
- The possibility of using predefined templates for its design allows us to focus on content and communication.
Other authors highlight a series of specific advantages related to the use of blogs in the educational field, such as they help the student become an expert, causing interest in learning to increase and offering students real channels of participation.
Likewise, thanks to educational blogs, the following can be evaluated in an easy and fast way:
• Writing and writing quality.
• Level of analysis and criticism of the topic discussed
• Ability to work in a group
• Management of new technologies
• Plugin implementation capacity
• Ability to upload articles to the network
Disadvantages of using educational blogs
The incorrect use of educational blogs can also cause a series of damages or disadvantages for everyone who uses them. Some of them are:
- The teacher must act as a guide since, by itself, the educational blog does not develop meaningful learning.
- Sometimes you are not aware that you should promote autonomous learning, so the teacher must monitor the work done.
- Abusing cut and paste when creating an article.
Recommendations
The teacher must be the mediator or facilitator of the content for the students so that they are capable of building their own learning. He must use this resource to redirect the computer skills and knowledge that students have so that they not only use them for entertainment and leisure but also to generate knowledge.
Use if edublogs at different educational levels
In Primary Education, blogs are commonly used so that students can access educational resources such as games, exercises, videos, cards, or maps made in a simple and accessible way for the abilities of these students. We found blogs from different areas of knowledge taught at this educational level. The same thing happens in the case of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO).
In the case of University Teaching, blogs are used for different purposes: as a work platform for doctoral students, and research groups, dissemination of works, publication of news of interest, or as a meeting point.
Regardless of the educational stage in which you work, you can distinguish various activities that can be carried out through the blog:
- Individual: Newspapers in which information of diverse nature is offered and the introduction of images, videos, or audios related to it. In addition, interactive tests can be carried out to find out the degree of achievement of the proposed objectives.
- Group: In this case, the collaborative activities are varied, since debates on different topics can be held, queries between colleagues, and even comment on any type of information provided to the blog.
In Mexico, numerous blogs provide guidance on entry and exit at various educational levels, both basic, high school, and higher and postgraduate education, as in the case of Pixoguias.
Most popular blogs platforms
Among the most prominent platforms to design a blog, whether educational or not, are WordPress or Blogger, although there is an infinity of them.
