Okay, it is the second week of the blog assignment. What insight into blogs have I gained in the past week? While trying to search for information on one particular subject, I decided to try the blog search engines suggested by my professor. I typed in my topic and got thousands upon thousands of responses. The problem was that none of the responses really related to what I was searching for. I tried another topic and got the same kind of results. What I was getting was a lot of personal blogs which contained no reference to the topics I was searching. I think I may be doing my blog searching wrong. I will have to explore that more this week. However, this whole experience has left me feeling even more positive that I don't like these blog things at all.

On a positive note, to meet my weekly goal, I have discovered another way in which I could incorporate blogs into my classroom should I ever become so inclined. I was thinking about this as I was entering my blog on our classroom blog site. One of the things that has been constant in my online classes so far is being asked about our preconceived knowledge of a topic through the discussion boards. So, I thought to myself why not set up a blog for my students to be able to provide this information. I would have the students in a class, possible a higher level class (juniors or seniors), keep a blog during the school year. They could record thoughts on what they thought they knew about the subject when the class started, what they learned during the year, and how that changed their perception of the subject. I can then track their progress and see if they are indeed getting what I expect them to get from the class.

All right! Two weeks down and two positive uses for blogs. Although I can find the positive, I'm not sure I will ever use these suggestions in my classes. Blogs are still blah!