Reflection on blogging

Introduction

The internet, predicted by McLuhan (1980) would create a ’’global village’’. In the space of a decade, the internet has made the world a very powerful tool for business and also for the way we communicate. In December 2005, the internet had 16 million users, which counted as 0.4% of the worlds population. By December 2009, the internet had 1. 8 Billion users, which is 26.6% of the worlds population.


Blogs

Marketingterms.com define blogging as ‘a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and websites’. A blog is normally a combination of a person’s personal views of what is happening in the world, or in their lives at that current time. People kept up with blogs long before the phrase was coined and the trend gained pace when blogger.com was established.

The first blog was published in 1992 and they really kicked off in the late nineties. The early blogs were mostly links to other websites, but they have developed drastically since then, with any person who thinks they have writing talent, the opportunity to express themselves. Blogs have either two aims, to be vain about themselves, family and friends or to have a deeper meaning: politics, environment etc.

Everybody nowadays has some kind of blog. Politicians, footballers, leading businessman. However, although freedom of speech is allowed, the blogger has to still be prepared to deal with any consequences that their words may bring. There have been examples of employees displaying discontent with their employer, only for them to view their blog and to then send their p45 through the post.

Blogging for higher education

Blogs have really progressed in the educational sector, mainly due to their interactivity, with

each user able to publish their own views. An obvious example of this are the blogs for this assignment. After every lecture of the ‘understanding the customer’ module, students were expected to write a blog on what happened in the lecture, this was alongside their own views and thoughts and with a little entertainment to go with it.

This according to (Bausch, Haughey and Hourihan, 2002) ‘’allows for the creation of a legitimate warehousing of captured knowledge and archiving for later retrieval’’

Looking at Ian’s blog appendix A, it is clear to see the influence it has on education. Firstly, as each week has gone on, more things have been added to the blogs like videos and pictures, which makes for a more fun, interactive way of learning. Secondly, as each blog is only 200-300 words, the information is more digestible to readers than reading out of a textbook or journal.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the use of the blog as a 21st century educational tool is very effective at improving the learning capabilities of both the student and lecturer alike. The amount of creative freedom that a student’s gets with a blog, gives the student the opportunity to express themselves, that they wouldn’t get from doing an assignment. Also the fact that it gives students more time out of the classroom to discuss theories and models, gives students an alternative way of learning. This way of learning will be an enhancement for further education and will become key to helping students to actively participate in learning at university.