Using blogging as an alternative to writing on pen and paper has its benefits and drawbacks. In English class especially, students often need to analyze literature, write multi paragraph essays, and critique the works of other students. All these can be achieved by blogging, but to decide whether or not to continue using Blogger, one must take look at what it has to offer.
The major benefit of blogging, as opposed to writing with pen and paper, is that it is much less time consuming. Imagine, having to write out essay after essay on paper. It would make one's arm sore, and consume too much precious time. The effort and time needed to write it out would be an incentive to not put in as much effort and time into the work, thus seriously deteriorating its potential quality. Blogging requires one to type, which is easy, effortless and much less time consuming. Time is precious and cannot be wasted, and anything that saves time without compromising anything is definitely worth using.
Another benefit of blogging is that it encourages people who are shy in class to speak out. For whatever reasons they are shy, and rarely voice their opinions in front of their peers, it is hurting their progress. They are not able to learn to critique information presented, and not able to express their opinions. Blogging gives them a voice, a voice to argue and support. This is where a lot of the learning comes from, hands on experience critiquing information. Since in blogging they will not have to face their peers and teachers, they would be less shy to speak, as evident in all the blogs in Ms.Lees' class. The bottom line is, blogging helps these shy people learn.
One last benefit of blogging is that it allows the inclusion of various media, from pictures to videos to online articles, which only serves to enhance the message of the essay. Obviously, this cannot be achieved in pen and paper.
On the other hand, there are some drawbacks that comes with blogging. When students are on the computer, it is predictable that they can be distracted, whether from Facebook, Youtube or whatever. This can halt their train of thought and can damage the quality of their work. Also, technical issues can occur that renders students incapable of posting, or commenting. Lastly, technical issues can be used as an excuse to not post and do their work.
But these problems are not unsolvable. Technical issues are quite rare, and if it does occur one can write on pen and paper as a last resort, or can send it to the teacher as proof of completion. Technical issues as an excuse will not be very effective. As noted above, there are solutions to real technical problems, hence the teacher will still expect completion, so there is no way these students can get away with not doing their homework.
Blogging does bring its benefits and drawbacks. However, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, as it saves time and encourages better quality of work. On top of that, there are solutions to the drawbacks, solutions that can be easily used. And it is for the reason that blogging does more good than harm, that Ms.Lees' second block English class must and will continue blogging.
Interesting - honing your debate and multiple paragraph skills at the same time . Some of your arguments seem strong while others weak on logic but good for more light -hearted tone (eg writing takes too much effort physically - one could argue that with our western chords becoming mode sedentary annually it would be better to use those mi
ReplyDeleteUses and motor skills than continue down the path we are headed.)
I'm interested to see what your peers think and how they respond