Blogging in Education

 Blogs are becoming more common and you cannot ignore the benefits that blogs have to offer. While some blogs offer parenting help, baking tips, vacation tips, or some other fun topic, blogs can also serve as great educational resources for teachers. Educational blogs give opportunities for the teacher to collaborate with ideas and grow professionally through sharing resources and tips. It also allows for teachers to work with each other and share and promote their teaching experiences. Educational blogs can be utilized by students as well as they can create their blogs to share with their classmates and teachers or benefit from their teacher's blog using it as a source for information. Educational blogs can be utilized in many ways by teachers and students. Benefits of blogging include easy accessibility to new and shared ideas, a form of easy unique communication with a population, and a way to get resources from other teachers. One of the downfalls of educational blogging is it may be hard to continually post and look at other blogs as it can be time-consuming depending on the length of the blogs. 

A student in a virtual school class
on a computer

Along the lines of using technology to advance and learn, during the past few years, we have seen a new form of learning come into play, virtual learning. Virtual learning was a way created to allow students to continue learning from home during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it was a great way to attempt to keep kids actively learning despite having to be outside of the classroom, some challenges and downfalls come with virtual learning. First, the teachers and students must have a basic understanding of how to use the platforms being utilized for virtual learning (i.e, Canvas, Zoom, Google Classroom, etc.). Aside from being able to understand and navigate the new software being used and dependent on, a lot of students do not have access to the proper technology needed to participate in virtual learning. Those without the ability to get technology for online schooling created inequalities to those who were able to afford computers and tablets, leaving those without the lack of schooling opportunities. In a perfect world where everyone does have access to virtual schooling, there are still negative effects that come along with it. Those doing virtual schooling are missing out on creating relationships in the classroom and are lacking social interaction. This lack of social interaction is said to be having an impact on children's mental health, as students need to have that kind of interaction. Even though it is not the same, the online platforms have done a good job at trying to bridge the gap by creating software with videos to create a classroom that feels more personal. Fortunately enough, the online platforms may be challenging for some to use, they seem to be pretty user-friendly and easy enough for students to be able to manage. Many challenges come along with virtual learning, but as time goes on technology is making it easier to feel more normal even while virtual. 

My experience with blogging has been very brief, but so far, I think it is a good opportunity to display ideas and thoughts. It is pretty easy to do, and if you have a good following I could see how it is a good resource to others. Personally, in the future, I could see myself having my students create blogs as a unique way to do different assignments or to do weekly check-ins. I do not see myself being able to keep up with a blog in the future and for communication will my class I will probably use another educational app line Remind. Blogging is absolutely a great resource for someone who can keep up with it!