Reflection on the Experience of Blogging

While blogging over the past few months, I have become more comfortable with this method of communication. Although there were some nights of panic in which I couldn’t seem to find any more to say about my two assigned topics, there were also many times in which I encountered new sites or ideas that I was very eager to share with my blog's readers.

The most positive part of this experience was definitely being part of a resource-sharing community. By learning about new websites and technologies from my classmates, I became excited to explore more of the web and to share my discoveries.

Each member of my blogging group made a lasting impact on my education. From the Confused Student in Information Technologies blog, I learned about the social tagging and recommendation site StumbleUpon, from which I was then able to find new websites to share in my own entries. I also enjoyed learning about Second Life from this blog and now see that it is a wonderful way for people who have trouble communicating in person to share their thoughts, ideas, and resources with one another. It’s also a helpful site from which people around the world can learn from one another for free.

Due to Ace’s Blog, I understand the usefulness of RSS feeds and can definitely see myself using them to keep informed about library-related news and ideas while working as a library media specialist. Geocaching also sounds like a great way to combine technology and the outdoors and may be an activity to begin with students or my family members in the future.

Thanks to Juddthelibrarian’s Weblog, I learned to give Wikipedia a chance, especially because it has a lot to offer in terms of pop culture and can be a great starting point from which students can gain background information on their topics and find more stringently-reviewed resources to support their claims. I also have begun searching both YouTube and TeacherTube for useful video clips on a variety of topics.

Finally, the research for my own blog entries has been very informative. While I doubt that I would purchase either DyKnow Vision or DyKnow Monitor for my upcoming elementary library position, I see their value as highly-interactive teaching tools for upper grades. Learning objects are even more directly applicable to my future, and I was thrilled to find and share learning object sites and repositories for future use.

Despite the “What could I possibly write about?” moments, I do view blogging as a useful information-sharing tool. Being able to link directly to discussed sites is very beneficial to a blog’s readers, and a blog is much more interactive than newsletters or other one-way communication forms. I do plan to create a school website blog for my upcoming library media specialist position and hope that students, teachers, and parents will share their favorite books, sites, and ideas with me as I share all of mine with them each week. I will include pictures, audio files, videos, and tutorials on my new blog to make it more interesting and useful than this current one. I also plan to involve students in blogging about books and research findings, as blogging is familiar to some students already and will provide them with the exciting opportunity to share their thoughts with the world!