This is my first attempt at "blogging" and really I am not sure if it is an advantage to blog or not. I guess I have benefited in the past with blogging and reading strands on how people have fixed computer. But then there is open access to the incorrect information and misconceptions spread throughout the World Wide Web (This is me thinking as a science teacher and breaking misconceptions each and every year). Think about it...how much stuff is really correct on the World Wide Web? I think blogs can perpetuate the problem of misinformation.
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While I do believe it is true that blogs have the potential to perpetuate inaccurate information on the web, the beauty of the blog format is that . . .
ReplyDelete1. Your audience, and therefore the participation in the discussion, comes from a much larger geographic area (potentially, the entire planet)
2. If someone states something that is factually inaccurate, there are more sets of eyes available to pick the statement(s) apart
3. You get many points of view to consider in any discussion
and
4. It is an opportunity, for both students and teachers, to analyze someone's arguments and critically think for themselves, instead of just blindly agreeing with one point of view provided in a more traditional setting.
For example, if you work from a textbook, and there are examples of species shown, and mentions of other species rumored to exist, and then they come along and actually discover some new species, those pictures won't magically show up in the already published textbook. This example can be expanded to cover all kinds of situations where content is ever-changing.
There are some drawbacks to blogs, of course. As an open medium, it has great potential to be abused or vandalized. So hosting a blog brings with it some editorial responsibility.