My Blog on Blogging

Although I don't have extensive experience with blogs, I have a firm grasp on the basic concept. Blogs are one of those web tools that does nothing but grow. More and more people use them every day, and for an increasing variety of reasons. I've read blogs that are used as an outlet for creative expression and story writing, as well as journals, informational posts, and collaborative projects.

All of these and more fall into the wide range of genres discussed by Jean Burgess in his article Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog (Burgess, 2006). I find it interesting the way Burgess distinguishes these genres not only by content, but also by writing style and conversational or speech patterns. Speech patterns may seem like a strange thing to use to categorize writing, but there's a huge difference, as any writer knows, between a serious, informative tone and a personal or anecdotal voice.

When it comes to using blogging in an academic context, as Burgess discusses, I never really thought about what a valuable learning tool it can be. It was obvious to me right away the value of using blogs to get students participating in readings or summarizing lectures, but I never thought about the full on integration of an academic blog into the everyday life of a student. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes in getting students excited about learning. When we're young, we love to explore and discover new things for ourselves, but somewhere in our stages of growing up, we tend to lose that excitement, instead falling into a pattern of fact memorization and regurgitation. Suddenly, when we're thrown into this world of creating our own learning and sharing space, students are given the opportunity to experiment again and learn how to... well, learn how to learn things for ourselves, without having them spoon-fed to us. Academic blogging opens the door for students to learn all about the world and then share what they've learned with others. Personally, I find that kind of invigorating.

References:

Burgess, J. (2006). Blogging to Learn, Learning to Blog. In Bruns, Axel, & Jacobs, Joanne (Eds.), Uses of Blogs (pp. 105-114). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.