Reflection on Blogging

http://esdandassociates.com/2013/07/8-tips-for-becoming-a-more-brilliant-writer/#sthash.nAuNE02Z.dpbs

As the Internet becomes an integral part of people’s lives, education blogs stand out as an effective and powerful tool for teachers as well as students. The process of reading online, engaging a community, and reflecting it online is a process of bringing life into learning (Downes, 2004, p.26). Indeed, even though the process of blogging in an Academic English classroom was part of my course grade it was a great experience to me. While I was challenged in choosing appropriate topics and posting them on time, blogging was beneficial in terms of interaction as well as enhancement my knowledge in specific field.

Unlike essay writing, where each assignment had its specific tasks and model topics, blog writing was challenging in terms of choosing themes. As Montgomery (2015) claims in his study, this is one of the substantial obstacles that blogs present. In the wide range of existing issues in education it was difficult to pick up exact one so that I could reveal the main idea and support it with evidences. Sometimes I spent hours looking for interesting ideas in the Internet, discussing them with my friends and finally considering their inappropriateness. Thus I suspended writing blogs till the end of the term.

Nevertheless, blog opened an opportunity to discuss topics outside of the classroom and interact with my peers at any time. I could easily share my thoughts and opinions and see others’ reflection and vision about a particular topic. Especially the first part of this semester was very interactive as regular notifications made me aware of blogs that were posted. Simultaneously written comments one after another often led to big discussions. Thus creating authentic communication among the students.

While reading through and commenting blogs I caught myself on the idea that I am learning a lot of new things. Indeed, it is the only place where all students from different cohorts share their knowledge, vision, and ideas. Downes (2004) states that ‘blogging is about, first, reading. But more important it is about reading what is of interest to you: your culture, your community, your ideas’ (p.24). And when there are number of blogs consider one issue from different points of view so that making ambiguous concepts easy to comprehend you gently broaden your horizons.    

             In conclusion, even though I had some challenges, blog writing was useful and interesting experience to me. I opened myself as a blog writer, who can easily share her ideas with others and discuss them. Moreover, I have learnt a lot of new things from my peers' posts in the sphere of education.  

Reference

Downes, R. (2004). Educational Blogging. Educase, 14-26. Retrieved from: https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0450.pdf

Montgomery, P. (2015, April). Did you read my 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.