In the past, when someone would say, “Hey! You should check out my blog!” the content was usually written accounts about someone’s thoughts and/or opinions on a subject. For example, a friend of mine had just received her bachelor’s degree in literature and had always been a fan of literature and film of a very macabre nature. Hence, she created a blog to discuss her thoughts about current film and literature in a way in which others could comment and engage in discourse about her interpretations of a particular piece, film or quote. Another friend created a blog of random sights or thoughts that she would experience throughout her day. She would take a picture of something interesting that she saw that day or she would overhear an interesting conversation on the train home from work and record her thoughts about it in her blog. The above examples are the extent of my limited experience with blogging.
I learned that this is clearly not always the case after reading Richardson’s blog. He effectively put together diverse specifics about the convenience of wikis, discussions about blogging and its usefulness in a variety of areas in the educational world, including classroom environments, and particulars on the vast worthiness of other technological tools and their effectiveness in the classroom. In addition to providing his audience with these essentials, Richardson also presents strategies for utilizing these tools successfully. His blog contains videos of his lectures, motivational speeches, even a calendar of events of sorts, giving details of his speaking schedules and/or other workshops being offered in which similar topics are discussed, a resource section which is dedicated to the explanation of what technological tools are available, including websites for learning about wikis, and probably some other things that I may have overlooked. It seems that richardson’s goal is essentially to deposit a wealth of information which informs his public of the new, wonderful tools available in the world of technology and how educators can effectively use them. In short, Richardson’s blog struck me as an elaborately and intricately detailed “how-to” website.
I very much appreciate the usefulness of Richardson's blog because it demonstrates how blogs can be used to relay information about specific topics to an audience, however, this particular blog was too overwhelming for me. I felt inundated by the various tabs, and in my opinion the blog itself was not very user friendly. While it was very informative, it was definitely a “stimulation overload” experience for me.
In the same respect, Colleen Mcneil’s blog is another blog that I would place in the category of “informative”. Much information is given about blogs and wikis, including updates on conferences, new technology items, and how to use these new tools. While this blog does not overwhelm one as much with data as does Rosenberg’s, it isn’t the type of blog that I would seek out on purpose. I realize that the perk of creating an informative blog is that they are updated more frequently, but I would still prefer to search for a website to learn the desired information.
to be continued...
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