I am a blogger. This is my 3rd blog. I have started following other bloggers and I know how to do a little more on WordPress. Wow, that’s a lot of progress in two weeks. I have been following Steve Wheeler on http://www.steve-wheeler.co.uk and looking back over his archive I found an interesting post on Seven reasons teachers should blog. He feels that he has learned more from blogging than any other activity and that it’s one of the most beneficial activities for personal development. I started to reflect on the reasons why students should blog.
- Digital literacy is a great way for students to make themselves more employable. Through blogging, they will learn how to use different tools and improve their skills in many practical ways by enhancing and customising their blogs.
- Students can express themselves. Be creative. Develop their own ideas and share visuals, videos and themes to get their message across.
- Blogging helps develop critical thinking skills which are essential as students move through tertiary education and are required to research and evaluate information.
- Students should write about what they know. Blogging helps expand knowledge by following other bloggers or doing some research for their own blog posts.
- Written communication skills can be improved through blogging. Students must decide how to approach your topic. What is your message? How will you format it? Composing blogs is a great way to practice the other writing skills they have learned in an interesting way.
- Students will learn to reflect on what they have learned. In class listening to a lecture or reading an article they start to ponder the topic. It’s interesting, they want to find out more and start to think about past experiences. Giving serious thought to a topic really does improve understanding.
- It’s fun! Students will discover lots of interesting information and get to write about it their own way.
Contemplating Writing 