ARTICLE REVIEW

TITLE: Exploring Educational use of blogs in US education.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/42/fb/cc.pdf

JOURNAL-VOLUME:

US-China Education Review, October 2008, Volume 5

DETAILS:

Wang Hong owns a PhD and works in the Center For Teaching Excellence & Learning Technologies, in Fort Hayes State University.

ARTICLE REVIEW:

First Paragraph:

Wang Hong wrote this research in the aims to explore and understand the functions of using a blog in the current education system in US. The purpose is also to motivate more educators in to use blogs in teaching and research as well as introducing blogs as a useful educational tool and its great potentials. There were several theories that Wang Hong wanted to pass out in this paper. The first thing he did was an overview of blogs. He described as a part of the Web 2.0 family, the second generation of web adventure. He also listed out some different forms of blogs such as LibLogs (library blogs) and EduBlogs (education blogs). He also wrote down several advantages and disadvantages in the paper. Some of the advantages that Wang Hong wrote is “information sharing, blogs allow users and readers to respond, to create, and to connect”. It is also simple to create and maintain blogs compared to discussion boards. A sense of ownership is also given to the students. The disadvantages written in the paper are,” inaccuracy of the information, intellectual property issues, and the volatile nature of the bloggers”. Wang Hong also describes several major categories of software in creating blogs, which are hosting services and installed applications. The easiest is the hosting services as the users do not need extensive knowledge on computers and the Web. The other type is the installed application; Wang gave two different applications as an example. This will require a much needed knowledge on technology. Wang also talks about EduBlogs, its usage and examples in this paper. According to Ray (2006), “blogs in education or EduBlogs can be used to communicate, as instructional resources, as collaborative tools, and showcases for student projects.” He also explained some of the advantages of using EduBlogs. Another part of his paper is that he lists down several examples of using blogs. He listed down to uses in this paper, the first is ‘Using blogs in scholarship’, and the second is ‘Using blogs in instruction’. He also listed examples for each of them and how they can be used. The last part of the paper is that he talked about several researches that is done into EduBlogs. One of the researches was done by Wassell and Crouch (2008) incorporated blogs into an undergraduate preserves teacher education course that addressed diversity and multicultural education. The other was done by Ellison and WU (2008), who he commented on their findings. And in the end he concluded his paper.

Second Paragraph:

This is research is a great eye opener to the many quality and functions of a blog. In the past, I knew blog as a place to write down your diaries or entries that other people can read and comment on. Now, I see many potential uses I having and using a blog a medium of instruction for teaching and learning. The research was well conducted as it concentrated on the functions of blogs in US education and it also describes and lists down the advantages for us to see and the disadvantages for us to learn and to overcome in implementing this method in our teaching. There were also several other researches that could be used as a reference point in this paper. There are several implementations that can be done in a general context and Malaysian context. Using a blog to teach will take the teaching and learning to a new height in Malaysia. As we are doing the TSL 641 subject in UiTm, we can already see that the assignments are different and much more interesting than before. Why can’t it be implemented in classrooms? Almost every school in Malaysia has a computer lab with internet equipped. Sometimes that lab is left to nothing as nobody ever uses it. So Malaysia and the world have a chance to implement it as it is probably going to be the next ‘in’ thing in education.