2. Why use blogs?

I have been asked by colleagues and others why I would choose to use a blog at all (or any other technology for that matter), or why do I not just use a chat room or a discussion board. To answer the first question, I believe that reading and writing are the only ways that students actually learn composition and that technology is just one means to facilitate that. A journal or some other regular writing practice is essential to my teaching. I was tempted to use a blog when I realized that blogs were free and that I would not have to carry thirty journals around. It is also harder to lose an online journal than a paper one. I ask the students to write their blog postings in MS Word and to then cut and paste it to the blog. A paper journal can be lost, but this method insures that postings will be lost only if blogger.com goes down and their computer crashes. Typically a blog is seen as an online diary or journal; that is how average users utilize blogs. My assignments, however, ask the students to use the blogs to post and to comment on another person’s blog (this is typical of online asynchronous bulletin board discussions). The students are also asked to write posts that link to other articles that support their research. As Anderson (2004) has noted “the capacity for students to create their own learning paths through content that is formatted with hypertext links is congruent with constructivist instructional design theory that stresses individual discovery and construction of knowledge.” I believe that this process is even more empowering for the students when they are creating the links.