Week 3 - Engagement activity 1

A blog on Blog's
I would start with saying that before this course I hadn't had a lot to do with Blogs. After creating the one you see now, I sought out some of the Authors that I read and "bam!" I found one. It has definitely been a positive experience reading other peoples blogs including my peers from this course as I have seen different opinions and ideas that I may have not thought of without the use of a this tool.

I think that the use of blogs in an educational setting could benefit the learners if blogs were use in the right context for the right type of learner. The use of a PMI to analyze blogs in a learning context can help to evaluate their usefulness.There are many pluses in using blogs in an educational context;
They can help with the private or public display of information gathered from field trips, science experiments etc.http://education.qld.gov.au/learningplace/ 
Students can write reflective journals or assessments by using blogs which can support the learning needs of students who wish to update or read their blog any time of day with the support of http://www.blogger.com/home 
 Lauren Samuels in her blog http://s0175946.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/engagement-activities-week-3.html used the Western Australian Department of Education (2012) definition as a quote. This is a good justification and an insightful motive to use blogs in classrooms in which Lauren cautioned that the teacher should be scaffolding and directing the learning when using blogs like any other teaching task.
I found very few minuses aside from the lack of ability (which hopefully I now have the ability) to set up blogs or for students who may not be ICT literate. Technology can sometime fail so back up plans would be needed (like any lesson incorporating ICT's). Some schools albeit few, may not have the capability of internet or allow the use of blogs

I personally find blogs interesting as do the students I have talked to about them. I think blogs are under used in the schooling context. For example, learners would benefit in a history class where students could compile the list of resources they locate as a form of collaborative learning by storing their findings for all their peers to access.