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.