Blogging. Challenging. Fun. Inspirational.

Retrieved from: http://worldwidegenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/01/want-to-be-geneablogger.html 

Globalization and fast developing era of Internet has played an important role in the process of learning and teaching.  Taking advantages of digital media educators and students are integrating various technologies and techniques into education. One of the tools to assist process of education, particularly, writing skills is blogs. For one semester blog posting has become a new form of academic writing and at the same time way of self-expression to the Master Students of Graduate School of Education at Nazarbayev University. Before describing personal experience of blog posting, it noteworthy to share with the growing number of literature on the topic of blogging in the context of education.

On the one hand, authors nicely admit positive sides, such as usefulness of blogs during the language learning, social communication, exchange of ideas, attraction of social audience, development own sense of voice, and progress in natural self-expression (Warschauer, 1997; Warschauer, 2010; Montgomery, 2015).

On the other hand, Montgomery (2015) claims that blog posting generated more personal issues, such as students’ responsibilities and self-confidence. A new learning environment had negative impact, since given freedom and autonomy in choosing topics confused students. As a result it took sufficient time to get used to the online and public learning environment. However, in general authors assert that blogging helped people to transform from consumers to the producers of information (Warschauer, 1997; Warschauer, 2010; Montgomery, 2015).

As for my personal experience related to the blogging, it can be described by few key words: challenging, fun and inspirational.  In the beginning of the semester as a novice public academician I struggled a lot.  Firstly, I had inner feeling that my blog post is worse than others’, I think it is directly related to the personal issues mentioned by Montgomery (2015) before.  The thoughts that your writing will be public and every single person can read, comment and judge bring to uncertainty in own confidence and self esteem. Second challenging moment was the structure of writing, when author needs to balance between keeping academic style of writing at the same time should sound natural without being artificial and boring. Lastly, the given autonomy was struggling too, personally, I could notice that it is much more easier to write on particular topic with given guideline and even better if literature is provided as well. Choosing interesting topic, searching for related literature, planning and expressing in own voice were the most difficult task to manage and control. However, as it is well know that everything comes through practice and there is no other magic way to become better writer and academician. Second part of spring semester became easier, motivational and fun, owing to the fact that panning process simplified the task; moreover it has turned to be inspirational to share own ideas and comment to others.   

In summary, I would like to admit that the experience of blogging was incredible. Such experience enables people, especially students who got used to be guided, to be more independent, confident, free and diverse.  This online educational platform is obviously place of ideas and social academic networking. 

References:

Montgomery, D. P. (2015, April). Did you read my new post?; Improving autonomy, English and engagement through class blogs. Paper presented at The International Conference for Building Cultural Bridges, Suleyman Demirel University. Kaskelen, Kazakhstan: ICBCB.

Warschauer, M. (1997). Computer-Mediated Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice. The Modern Language Journal, 81(4), 470-481.

Warschauer, M. (2010). Invited commentary: New tools for teaching writing. Language Learning & Technology, 14(1), 3-8.