BLOGGING

For our third post in our blog, we were to discuss on blogging, our understanding and our own experience in creating blogs. First, I will summarize on a topic introduced in the OLT book which is "Blogging and Trainee Teachers’ Professional Development", written by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. The article first wrote the introduction of blogs on trainee teachers; as part of their coursework and professional development. Trainee teachers’ had been introduced to using computer-mediated applications in the form of an e-forum as part of their coursework conducted by a researcher.
There are two main reasons for the use and application of blogs for trainee teachers’; first, to provide them a first hand experience of using the applications to develop their confidence in using the internet as a resource for teaching and learning. Second, to provide the teachers experience of reflecting on their reading and teaching text during the simulated teaching sessions. However, as stated by Vethamani, computer mediated applications are a "more recent but less conventional means of professional development".
Then, the article goes in depth on blogs ang blogging. In short, a blog is a "web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs after reflect the personality of the author". Most of the researches talked about blogging as a reflection of experiences in writing. Dewey’s defines reflection as "the kind of thinking that consists in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious thought".
Lastly, the research mainly concludes that the data from the questionnaire and the analysis of the trainee teachers’ blogs indicates that blogging is beneficial for their professional development.

On the other hand, from a student’s point of view, my experience in creating my own blog has been a very interesting one. I have heard of blogs for quite some time but never thought of doing one of my own until being introduced or actually forced to do one. When I think of it, it does not excite me as much as when I’m really doing it. When I actually post something or insert stuff I like, only then I could feel the excitement and think how great it would be if people do look into my blog. However, having blogs or looking into other peoples blogs does have its advantages and disadvantages. A certain advantage of having a blog of our own is that we could express our feelings and thoughts freely. What is bad about it is when people write or twist facts or spread rumors about other people in their blogs that could create controversy and war among us. Besides that, blogs can be a medium to spread information to the people around the globe the fast and easy way. It can also be used as an application in teaching and learning as explained in detail in the article that I have summarized above. Writing in blogs could certainly help with our writing skills just as any other writing lessons done in class but more fun because we can have comments from all sorts of people in many different places and write in creative beautiful pages designed by ourselves. Finally, from the blogging activity, I have managed to improve my skills not only in writing but also in typing. I have gained confidence in expressing myself and in presenting my findings in front of an audience. In a nutshell, blogging has certainly helped me a lot not only for this course, but in all my courses that I am taking.