Reflection on Blogging

Blogging in education is one of the new popular methods of learning process. Despite the facts that blogging develops reflective skills and creativity, it has limitations as estimation of English writing improvements due to the lack of instructor’s feedback.

According to Churchill (as cited in Lai and Chen, 2011), using blogging in education students could read other’s blogs, write comments and receive feedback related to their posts. In other words, blog is an effective learning tool to improve reflective skills of students. For example, blogs could encourage students to be more supportive (Lai and Chen, 2011). Moreover, this online dialogue between students contributes to think critically, “as students must defend their ideas with evidence and logical argumentation” (Montgomery, p. 4). From my experience, blog posts of some group mates gave me food to think regarding some educational topics. Blogging is the ideal platform to share your ideas or argue, or support it. In this sense, “Personal reflections are a vital part of weblogs, providing a human-scale perspective on the problem of information acquisition and analysis” (Oravec, 2003, p. 227). By this, the author means that it is difficult to be indifferent in blogging.

According to Montgomery (2015), it is challenge for students to choose blog topics: “Self doubt and hesitation to present one’s writing in a public forum are natural reactions to a new and initially frightening challenge” (p. 4). However, for me, this challenge could be an opportunity to develop creativity of students. Through searching the interesting topic, students read literature and other’s posts. Students often diversify their blogs, adding pictures, videos and useful links which could be considered as part of creativity process. Even some students tried to attract readership with unique titles of posts. From my personal experience, I tried to be meticulous writing every post due to openness of blog posts. Creativity is pivotal part of writing interesting posts.

Despite the positive effects of blogging on students as development of reflective and creative skills, it has some limitations which connected with writing accuracy and progress. According to Montogomery (2015), the instructor could encourage students to write more fluently, posting the example posts. However, the obstacle as writing accuracy is relevant for majority of students. More specifically, for me, it is hard to observe writing progress, especially in style and formality. Students do not receive feedback from instructor which could be helpful in avoiding repetitive mistakes in writing. On the one hand, blogging contributes to write more personally about relevant topic. On the other hand, students sometimes forget that blogging is the part of English language lessons, not non-curriculum activity. Hence, I think, it is crucial to have timely feedback in order to improve academic English level.

Overall, blogging has the benefits and disadvantages. Blogs as an effective communicative tool develop reflective and creative skills of students. However, for me, it is difficult to see certain progress in academic writing, especially in accuracy. Personally, implementation of blogging is the unique and interesting learning tool.

References

Lai, H. M., & Chen, C. P. (2011). Factors influencing secondary school teachers’ adoption of
teaching blogs. Computers & Education, 56(4), 948-960.

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

Oravec, J. (2003). Blending by blogging: weblogs in blended learning initiatives. Journal of Educational Media, 28(2), 225-233