Blogs and the 21st Learner

Blogs are online running dialogs for dispersing information both collegially or casually.  They have an incredible educational value as they allow learners to reach out, share information, and trade ideas.  The 21^st century learner can view ideas, review previous learning as needed, view embedded video clips, post responses, synthesize information and create new products which are immediately shared with others to view and provide feedback.  This transaction of sharing ideas and trading information has created a global community of learners who are able to communicate with each other from a distance.  No longer are people limited to voice-to-voice conversations, time constraints like school day hours or staff meetings from 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm, or singular mediums like books or classroom teachers to facilitate learning.  This virtual learning, or learning without walls, has taken literacy to a new level.  The ability to share ideas with people in your classroom, school, or across large geographic areas like cities, states, or continents allows us to connect and learn from people in new and previously unreachable ways. Learning becomes much more immediate, engaging, and ever-changing.


Blogging in education brings with it some notable controversy and concerns due to the unfiltered access to information from multiple sources on the internet.  How do students identify excellent sources of data on the internet amidst all the options available?  In years past, the books, which housed the information that students learned from, was filtered by publishers, school curriculum specialists, teachers, or other experts in the field.  Teachers and librarians can educate students in how to locate an excellent library resource with ease and few complications.  Parents can take their child to the library and know with reasonable certainty that if their child was researching the American Revolution, that the books their child found were worthy resources. Now, however, with unlimited information available on the internet, students must filter the information retrieved on their own.  A simple Google search on the American Revolution, using only the words, “American Revolution” yielded 968,000 results in .07 seconds.  Information is definitely available to students.   So how do today’s students filter those results into something that is manageable and worthy of their time? Today’s students need to be taught how to search for and identify quality internet sources.  This means classroom teachers must be educated in how to teach these strategies so that students can become the facilitators of their own learning.


Blogging provides a time efficient way to communicate with key players and stakeholders and receive feedback.  It allows individuals to view information housed in one location.  It creates a one-stop-shopping kind of information repository.  Why do so many people love to shop at Target or Walmart?  It is because one can walk into a single store and find nearly everything needed in one trip.  Blogging allows for the same thing with information and learning.  On a school campus, grade level blogs can provide tools, tips, video clips, tutorial information, upcoming events, and educational links and resources for parents to check out.  Principals can use blogs to not only disperse information but also gather feedback on procedures or campus wide events.  In past years, I have facilitated book studies via blogs.  It was an excellent way to participate in a book study without being tied to additional meetings at specific times during the week. As a dyslexia therapist, I have a blog for my parents which houses links to published and peer reviewed research, notable dyslexia associations, authors for parents and children to read, and tools and tips for working with students with dyslexia.  I no longer need to email out this information individually.  I simply send parents the link to the blog and they can “shop” on my blog as they need this information. Blogs allow us to work smarter, not harder as information is posted, reviewed, referenced, and utilized without the need for face-to face meetings.