Bloggings, educative online journals for all

This article appeared in The Jakarta Post, Feb 21, 2005

Bloggings, educative online journals for all

Jaha Nababan, Contributor, Jakarta

Blogging is not bragging.

Information written in a blog is maintained as free usable knowledge. That statement contradicts what Roy Suryo, an Indonesian information and communication technology (ICT) expert, said in a monthly business magazine.
He said he intentionally did not create a blog or a personal homepage -- he probably meant personal website -- because he did not need one. This ICT expert could not have seen Bernie Dodge's personal blog.

"Blog" derives from the word "weblog". A blog is an online journal. Blogs allow their users to become self-publishing authors on the web without needing to have any web development skills.
A lot of teenagers use blogs to create online diaries that they can share among friends. That is how blogging gained its popularity. Unfortunately, blogs have become an online "bragging arena".

Bernie Dodge of San Diego State University is the father of Webquest. This is considered to be an American Educational Technology breakthrough. It is an online portal where teachers all over America can post their web lessons.
Webquest allows other teachers to review the posted web lessons and rate them before using the web lessons in the classroom.

Bernie Dodge, as the leading pioneer of Webquest and similar research, established his blog to get comments from his readers and colleagues on the views he shared. Bernie's readers can observe his train of thought through his blog.

Currently, there are many classroom projects that make use of blogs. Students are asked to create online journals on class projects they are doing. The journals are shared among classmates. Classmates can review and add more information by commenting on the blog. The blog becomes the owner's means to harnessing valuable information from colleagues.
A blog has more advantages than a personal website. It is easier to create and maintain a blog than a website. By employing a well thought-out lesson plan, blogs can be used to encourage students to manage information.

Students are required to look for information and verify its validity prior to publishing. Blogs also encourage students to organize thoughts and improve their writing skills. These are the keys to maintaining the loyalty of blog readers.

There are currently many add-ons that can improve a blog. These require little knowledge about HTML hypertext markup language, a simple web-programming language.
Having add-ons in the blog can improve interaction within it. Many blog owners are always looking for ways to improve a blog's utility by adding more add-ons. Blog owners improve their HTML skills along with the improvements in their blog site.

It is the nature of a journal that a blog can be used to track the development of information or train of thought of a particular blog owner.
By tracking the development of a student's thoughts in his or her journal, the teacher can guide the student through the learning process. In order to use the blog in this way, the teacher must devise a proper lesson plan that allows collaboration between students.

The research projects mentioned above are trying to find the best formula for such lesson plans. Experimenting with a blog is relatively easy for teachers because of two things.
The first is the easy nature of a blog that can be adopted by teachers. Second, the output of a blog is in written format. This is a familiar format for many teachers.

As mentioned above, blogs have been used for bragging. Yes, like other inventions, blogging has side-effects. The growth of technology allows the conversion of old-fashioned habits into new forms.

First there were books; then came the e-book. However, it is not necessarily true that conventional diaries will be followed by e-diaries.
To blog is certainly not to produce an online diary. Parents should also know the nature of blogging and how to use it to educate children. Children sharing private stories online may come to harm as there are many adults preying on children online.

Life is a journey; there is so much to be discovered. Parents should encourage children to embark on a journey of discovery and write it down in a blog. Let technology be a part of the shared moments of parents and children.

Otherwise, like a knife, it will cut you off from your loved ones.

Jaha Nababan (jaha@fulbrightweb.org), a Fulbright grantee and Kelly scholar, is a Boston University School of Education graduate in educational media and technology. He is currently teaching at FISIP Universitas Indonesia.