Final Reflections

Already two weeks have gone by and it is time to submit my blog. I learned a lot in these two weeks. I wrote my first blog, learned to embellish the page with pictures, links, and loaded a Power Point presentation and video.

Here are some points I would like to make in final analysis
· The first comment I have is that to write a blog for a class will require a lot more work than I first realized. The current generation of students is also the generation that grew up with word processing, Photoshop and cool web pages. A class blog must be organized, well designed, and easy to navigate. The information must be up to-date and updated (I just discovered that the World Health Organization feed is not dynamically linked and does not change.) The blog reflects both on the college as a teaching institution and on me as an instructor. It can be quite time consuming and demanding to write a blog that meets the expectations of the class. As an example, a slide presentation on SlideShare looks better than on Scribd. It will take time and effort to select the appropriate tools.
· A blog in the case of instruction is not a personal journal. All the links must work and all the information be relevant. I read excellent blogs and blogs that looked good, but on close reading the contents were of dubious academic quality. Some blogs were pedantic, didactic, and pretentious. Others were confused and confusing. I am so glad I am not a student in those classes.
· Privacy and security are a major personal issue for historical reasons. There must be a “blogtiquette” that needs to be followed: courtesy, respectful comments, avoid unnecessary personal information and long-winded comments. I would like to take inspiration (plain English: cut and paste) from the blogging policies of IBM.
· Redundancy is also a question I would like to discuss. I post most of my teaching material on a class management tool provided by the college. A blog is open to the whole wide world. It takes discernment to decide what is to be shared and what is for the class only.
· There is no doubt that I have to learn or refresh HTML if I want to write a good blog. The beginner’s templates are great to go online in a few minutes, but the instant I wanted to add flexibility and appearance I was lost in the forest of my mistakes.
Would I use a blog for my class? Absolutely! It is too powerful an instruction tool to ignore. There is so much flexibility with a single click, too much interaction with students not to use it. Navigating Angel can be infuriating to students. It takes umpteen clicks, “OKs”, authorizations to download and other hurdles only to discover that you really don’t care about the information you reached. What a waste of time!

I announced in class that I was writing a microbiology blog for a course I was taking as part of professional development. My students’ first reaction was “What is the URL?” That sums it up, doesn’t it?