Blogger Review

Throughout this semester we have been using blogger.com for the presentation of our assessments.  This is the first occasion that I have used blogger.com; in fact, it's the first time I have blogged full stop.  I have found the blogging aspect of the assessments challenging and for educational purposes I am not entirely convinced that it has a place within the assessment criteria, nevertheless I have found the experience interesting and I have learnt a lot about blogs. 

In our first couple of sessions we set up our blog, designed it and learnt to manoeuvre our way around the site enabling us to create posts and view our blog.  Further seminars enabled us to complete more complex tasks like adding gadgets and making our blogs more personal to us.

 

 

When completing the assignment for Caroline using blogger I noticed that some of my work had been shared publicly, as I mentioned before this is not suitable for the assessment scenarios as you are making your work readily available for people to copy.  Fellow students are 'following you' so they are able to see a live feed of all of your work as it is being posted and it is being sent directly to their news feed.  Going forward to make the assessments less accessible it could be suggested that maybe students shouldn't be told to follow each other.

 

 

With regards to using blogger.com again; I like the site and the idea of blogging, however it is not something that I find enjoyable, having not used it for anything other than the work requested of me, and I cannot see myself wanting to blog in the future, if I were to use blogger.com again it would either be for educational or professional reasons; not personal.

Educational Blog Review

For my blog review I have focused on the Education - Telegraph Blogs.  I found this blog particularly useful when keeping up to date with current education news as the posts are based on the hot topics in the news today, with a focus on what is going on in schools if not with a strong political underpin.

Initially, when sourcing 'educational blogs' on the internet searches I found myself struggling, I had come across a few blogs that took my fancy, although they were not solely based on education, they would only have the odd post weekly based on the topic but they would also cover a wide variety of news stories.  My favourite blog of all is The Parentdish found in my blog list, many of the education based stories are controversial but also focus on what is happening within our schools today. 

Back on topic, I chose the Education blog from the Telegraph for my review as the information is being communicated by a newspaper and therefore I believed that it was a more trustworthy source to use for academic purposes.  Although I found the blog informative I also noticed that the author(s) were very left wing and their view were extremely pro David Cameron and Michael Gove never questioning them, and even though I sit on the fence with Cameron as a Prime Minister, Gove has a lot of view with regards to education that I disagree with.  With this in mind I did find some of the blog posts irritating and bias towards the Tory party.

Overall the blog is useful and informative and I would use it in the future to keep up with current affairs in the education sector.