Walking Stick Blogger

A Learning Space for Literacy and English Language Learners

Why Should Literacy Learners Bother with Blogging at all?

1. Bloggers read a lot more.

Blogging gets you reading about topics you are interested in. The chance to keep track of what many others are saying about a special topic is a reason many would-be bloggers first start out as followers of other blogs.

2. Bloggers can keep track of resources online

You can keep tabs on the online resources you have found interesting, and insert them into your posts as links. This way you keep a personal record of where you have been, what your impressions were at the time, and can also share your links with others, too.

It is so easy to subscribe to blogs, so you don’t have to visit them everyday, and instead have them sent to one page called a blog aggregator, like Bloglines.com

3. Bloggers have to think twice about what they are writing

The very act of blogging makes you think twice before posting. Who are you writing for? Most of us starting out think that no one will read our blogs, except our teacher. This is not necessarily true. This is your own page, with your own ideas, so it is not really meant just for a teacher. It is for you, your friends or family, your co-workers, or even for potential employers.

Blog posts stay online, archived somewhere, so we need to pay attention to what we are saying. You can always delete your posts, edit them, but they might have already been read, and stored away on someone’s hard drive, or sent by email as an attachment. Thanks to archive.org many web sites have earlier versions stored away for archival research decades from now. Best to NOT post something you might be embarassed about others reading ten. twenty years down the road. At least for now, if you are unsure whether to post controversial ideas as public, restrict access to them. Keep a private journal, and even invite others you trust to comment.

4. Blogging Organizes Your Thoughts

The good side about blogging is that it gives you a drafting board, a sandbox, so you can draft ideas, put thoughts down before you forget them, record disconnected impressions or experiences. When you have many ideas on your blog, you can then spend time de-cluttering, revising, and re-working your ideas into topics for essays. Did you know that a writing sample is sometimes needed to apply for school? It is even sometimes a requirement for employment?

5. Blogging makes you feel better

Blogging de-clutters your ideas – it gets them out on the page. You can read and re-read what you have read, then stash it away for private reading later, re-visit it weeks or months later, or share it with others.

Writing a private journal about what is happening in your life can help you work through conflicts, emotional dilemmas, and even give you a safe venting space.

6. Blogging is great for meeting like-minded people

You are going to have access to hundreds, thousands of people with the same interests as you have, and you can open up and share your ideas, and be heard. You can share links with others, and have others share links with you. You can comment on others’ ideas, and have others’ comment on your ideas.

7. Blogging is like your own classroom

The act of blogging puts the choices of learning in your own hands. You decide the topic you want to learn about, you find the resources, you read the blogs, and find links and share ideas with others, you watch videos and listen to the podcasts. And while you may have an instructor guiding you with the writing process, with the “how” of blogging to learn, the what of learning is left up to you.

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netizenship • May 6, 2010


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