Blogging in education and society Personal assessment

I begin this posting with an extract from an article which explains some of the practical uses for blogging in education. The article,

Academic blogging: academic practice and academic identity by
Gill Kirkup*Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

discusses some of the areas in which blogging can contribute to the educational process.

The abstract is below. Note the key statement that blogging could create a new 21st century academic identity as a "public intellectual".
Abstract
 This paper describes a small-scale study which investigates the role of blogging in professional
academic practice in higher education. It draws on interviews with a sample of academics
(scholars, researchers and teachers) who have blogs and on the author’s own reflections on
blogging to investigate the function of blogging in academic practice and its contribution to
academic identity. It argues that blogging offers the potential of a new genre of accessible
academic production which could contribute to the creation of a new twenty-first century
academic identity with more involvement as a public intellectual.
Keywords: blogging; writing; academic practice; scholarly texts; identity; academic literacies
 Conclusion:
Recent educational literature has given a long list of educational reasons why blogging is
useful for students (see Farmer 2006; Kerawalla et al. 2008, 2009; these last two articles
describe work that the author of this article was also involved with) these include: as a reflective
journal, as a notebook to record events and developing ideas, as an aggregator of resources, and
as a tool for creating community and conversation with fellow students. Blogging might provide
students with alternative sites for academic identity creation that are less problematic than
traditional ones, but blogging has been less enthusiastically embraced as offering alternatives for scholars and researchers.

I chose to use these excerpts because I believe they state clearly some academic uses of blogging in education. (highlighted) I am particularly interested in the use of blogging to consolidate information in a single easily accessed location, and the use of blogs in society to create communities. Drawing together people of like minds and interests is so much easier through the use of blogs.  A search of the internet shows that blogs range the spectrum of interests, from the tawdry to the fantastic.  The exchange of thoughts and ideas is continuous, and while it has many benefits, it has dangers as well.  It is easy to get carried away with a blog and if proper caution isn't exercised bloggers can mislead gullible readers.  To paraphrase a well known adage, let the reader beware.  The very universal and public nature of a blog is also a danger, because predators can use the blog to lure innocents to their web.  

Blogs can range from utter drivel, to rocket science (literally) and I found research articles referring to the use of blogs teaching nursing, “Blogging” As an Educational Enhancement Tool for Improved Student Performance: A Pilot Study in Undergraduate Nursing Education.Detail Only Available By: Roland, E. Joyce; Johnson, Charlene; Swain, Deborah. New Review of Information Networking, Nov2011, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p151-166, 16p; DOI: 10.1080/13614576.2011.619923, music Instructional Blogging in the General Music Room.Full Text Available By: Kerstetter, Kathleen. General Music Today, Oct2010, Vol. 24 Issue 1, p15-18, 4p; DOI: 10.1177/1048371310362516, and linear algebra  BLOGGING AND THE LEARNING OF LINEAR ALGEBRA CONCEPTS THROUGH CONTEXTUAL MATHEMATICS.Full Text Available By: Nehme, Zeina. Mathematics Teaching, Nov2011, Issue 225, p43-48, 6p...Looks like properly applied, a blog can be used for many learning applications.  My personal favorites are those that allow poets and writers to share their work, and assist each other in their writing via online literary critique and comments.