So...I found a blog post containing statistics about using blogs in education. (Insert Xzibit meme...) A survey was given, taken mostly by teachers, asking them which blog platform they preferred, and reasons why they liked "edu-blogs." Practically, blogs are easy to use, easy to manage, free, and free from ads. For the students, they seem to like having an online "space" to themselves, that they like to keep neat and accurate for the eyes of not only their teacher, but their peers and the rest of the world that might be reading. The audience feels more real, so the students put forth more effort to please that audience.
Although this report mainly comes from K-12 schools, I still think that a lot of these benefits apply to our blog as well. I did read every comment that was added to one of my posts, and I did put forth more effort into my posts than I probably would have in some notebook-paper homework assignment (that I would've thrown away as soon as I got it back.) In addition, reading all of your posts kept me on the same page of what everyone else was thinking about, which I could then bounce off from. So to answer again, more completely, the blog really was a great idea for this class, and I have evidence for that statement now. Thanks for a good year, everybody.
http://theedublogger.com/2012/07/26/the-state-of-educational-blogging-in-2012/
This was an interesting article Emma. Thank you for posting. It would have been interesting to see more student respondents though. Hopefully they will do another poll soon, I would love to participate.
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