Final thoughts?

Well it is the last week of class in my ED517 course. I am still not convinced of the value of blogs. After several weeks of exploration, I have not changed my opinion. I have found way too much "personal, useless, crap" in my venture into blog world. I wish there was some way for someone somewhere to monitor all the garbage on the internet. But, I guess that is what makes the internet the place that we all love and adore. It is a place where we can go and forget all our cares, get lost in endless searches, read other peoples' blogs and realize our life isn't so bad after all, and it is where we can find ourselves. Up until a few weeks ago I had not given much thought to blogs. Now I find myself reading the news and political related blogs a little more. I guess that would be a positive effect of this whole blog assignment. Also, I think I may keep posting to my blog throughout the rest of my online education experience. It just may help me keep things in perspective.

As this week's positive use of blogs in the classroom I turn to the political arena. When I was in school, we ran mock elections during presidential election years. It was great fun to pick a candidate and run a campaign. I think that I could have my students do this using blogs to provide information on the candidates and hold informal debates with other students over issues. The students could combine the use of blogs, wiki-pages, or webpages to run their campaigns. I think this could be a good exercise.

One problem with assigning any computer related project, especially involving the internet, is that in today's advanced society there are still students who do not have home access to computers and/or the internet. I posted comments about this on our class discussion boards. It seems hard to believe, but it is true. So, I will need to find a way to make my blog (and other computer) activities classroom assignments. I think this may be fodder for a future blog entry...