Blog to Learn.

Do you journal? Did you used to but can’t find the time? Try blogging to learn and reflect. Writing a blog can help you (and your learners!) to share thoughts and a point-of-view more publicly, to share events or ideas on where to go for new forms of learning, to share a portfolio of ideas, or to share your vision over time.

Web 2.0 tools such as blogging are well researched and are proving to have a very enriching effect on learning (Calfskin, 2019). We know that reflection enhances learning and that coming back to information in different ways again and again will help memorization go faster and make learning easier (Brown, 2014). In other words, retrieval practice improves our knowledge and retention.

There are a number of ways you can incorporate blogging into your team systems or learning environments. A few ideas? Take a field trip and invite your team or classroom to blog about the experience based on 2–3 prompts. Take time to debrief and reflect as a group after a big assignment and ask everyone to blog about their experience. Create a team or class blog where everyone can post resources and ideas that can inspire a collaborative project.

Here are a few blogging resources. I hope you enjoy them and find them helpful!

What to Blog About: 101 Irresistible Blog Ideas
Teaching with Blogs
How to Build a Blogging Team

References

Brown, Peter C. (2014). Make it stick: the science of successful learning. Cambridge, Massachusetts.The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Caliskan, S., Guney, Z., Sakhieva, R. G., Vasbieva, D. G., & Zaitseva, N. A. (2019). Teachers’ views on the availability of web 2.0 tools in education. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 14(22), 70–81. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v14i22.11752