Weblogs in
higher education context.
1. The value of a weblog in higher
education is that it supports creation of autobiographical internet presence
and developmental of a critical intellectual voice. It makes people expose
themselves to the world by writing about their passion, myths and literacy.
They also write situations that are similar to the ones we see in our everyday
lives, so we can relate. Blogs help us to explore different kinds of genres in
a very interesting way. Weblogs also play a very important role in knowledge
acquisition in many people e.g. students and professionals who are not in the
same career field. Weblogs help to develop people time intensive approach.
Through weblogs we get an insight of peoples professional and personal lives.
Weblogs are among other genres that present information about internet
resource, especially I higher education context, this is said because reading
weblogs can replace reading many thick books, portal and newsgroup in search of
a certain book.
2. I have not yet had much experience
about blogs because I was introduced to blogging last year when I was doing my
first year. We did not do much we only wrote assignments when we were required
to. I feel privileged to have had an opportunity to be exposed to blogging. I
only have 6 post on my blog, 5 from my TSD module and 1 from my EFP module. I
have seen some other educational sources referring me to a certain blog which
contains the kind of information I have been looking for, so just click on the
blog’s link and obtain the information. I think writing our work on blogs will
make other students copy others work and present the work as their own since
everyone will be allowed to see. The mark allocation also creates confusion
because you are given work to write on a blog but you are not told marks
allocation. That is what causes people to write 5 paragraphs for 10 marks. I
think replacing pen and paper with writing on the internet is quite fascinating
but it also has its disadvantages like what if the teacher cannot find the work
or there is no internet connection and your school work is due in a few hours.
3. To increase the effectiveness of
weblogs in higher education students need to be given a lot of work that
requires them to use blogs. In that manner students will spend a lot of time to
familiarise themselves using the internet. Students must be encouraged to
comment on each other’s blogs. Lectures must provide feedback so that students
can know where they went wrong what to fix and what to add.
