Blogging has become one of the most important literacy skills of the 21st century. While few people are disillusioned enough to think that Facebook or Twitter could actually be valuable for social commentary or as serious discussion forums, blogs have become accepted as a democratic and ‘authorized’ space for digital knowledge production. The other important aspect of blogging and blog culture is that it allows people or groups to give others continuous updates on a variety of topics and receive feedback. I want to briefly explore the relationship of blogging to education.
Many companies and organizations, across various sectors maintain blogs as a way to communicate and update their constituency. In the last few years I have noticed especially NGOs embracing blogging as a way to market their work and to show progress. Either way, corporate blogging has spread rapidly and is now an established marketing communication tool for companies.
The only reason I bring up blogging in an economic/marketing context is because ’employment skills’ plays such a large role in discussions about education and education pedagogy. While it is clear that knowing how to blog is now one of those skills, there are other far reaching benefits of blogging in education and the classroom. Besides appealing to students in a technologically stimulating way, we can also use blogs to teach children about democratic participation, community building, online ethics, and networking. In addition to these crucial civic/social skills I have also found some obvious and interesting articles on the uses of blogging in education.
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