blogs as a Learning tool....

Well I know I have already posted to this blog once before about how I think blogs can be used as a learning tool, but for this next class it has become a requirement again to answer this same questions and create a blog. You think that maybe in these classes in the same degree program they would not repeat assignments....but oh well, lets see how much I can improve how much more I believe blogs can be used for educational purposes. Please do look up my other post about how I find blogging to be educational. I might miss something from that post and not put it in this post.

Blogging is something that does take some skill to some extent, I am not a writer at heart and find it hard to always know how to put what I am feeling into words and down on paper/computer. But with practice I have found ways to improve upon how to write in a more efficient way and give blogging a chance. I don't keep up on it regularlly but I do try to do it when I have the time.

As far as being educational, I think that being able to know how to blog can be a very bennifical thing for all students, learing how to write down what you are feeling or what you are experienceing in your life helps you to be able to express yourself. this is a skill that will remain for a lifetime.

My daughter blogs in her own sort of way. She write creative stories and shares them online with her friends. She has found a site called Tikitok that allow young students to post their creative writing online for others to read and comment on. This was a great way for her to get her writing out there and read by her peers, since she is homeschooled and doesn't get much of that. She made a few friends online and loved reading others books and getting more ideas for new books she wanted to write. This site also allowed for authors to work together on books and post them to the site.
But now some new developments have come of this public site, some kids were not following the rules and such so the administration has to make it more restrictive because of the negative comments that were happening and the complaints they were getting. This upset my daughter and one of her close friends who lives here, because this was a place they felt they could express themselves and make friend with other authors.
As you can see from this above story, having public sites sometimes becomes a problem and makes it hard for those of use who want to use them properly to be able to do that because of those who spoil it for them. I think that my daughter could use blogger.com to post her stories on and share the links with her friends locally and on facebook if she wanted too, then she would still have a way to share the books she so enjoys writing.
I also see blogging as a way teachers can create little communities in their classrooms to encourage their students to improve their creative writing and share with their peers. This could be monitored closesly links kept private so that the problems my dauther ran into on Tikitok would be reduced from happening.
Overall blogging is an educational tool, if it is monitored for kids.

Links of sites I talked about in this post:
blogger.com
http://www.tikatok.com/