Author’s Paulus and Spence explain the use of blogs in the university setting as an educational tool. This tool may help student for reflecting upon prior knowledge or revert to preconceptions about understanding and failing to grasp new concepts. The nutrition education department welcomed the new insights about technology being utilized more as prior conceptions for online activities included tutorials, or tests. So blogs were an opportunity for socialization interaction with peers as well as reflecting or sharing upon knowledge from classes. Research from Deng and Yuen provide three potential of implementing blogs: course structure, purposeful dialogue, and learner autonomy. Paulus and Spence felt blogging was more engaging, and motivating as well as utilizing media options. So the discussion was the emphasis, spawning subsequent reflection and peer situations for the students. However through their research much more has to be figured out to find a balance of reflection and student interaction.
My thoughts: with the advent of Web2.0 more high schools will have students creating blogs for their classes. Since blogs are template based and design friendly, the individual does not have to think about creating a blog from scratch from HTML. Now they have almost a dashboard of informational tools at their desire such as CSS feeds, application for phones, and linking to other blogs. With this in mind the more students graduate from the secondary school systems, they will take their blog with them to higher education. It almost may be a benefit for universities to require students to create a blog upon entrance or during the application process. It may take some of the inhibitions out of interacting with others in a blog situation, like the one mentioned in this article. Blogs may even help college freshman adjust better to working autonomously, reflecting on experiences, talking to other freshman, and finally knowing how to successfully work at asynchronous level for the first time in their educational endeavors.
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