The power of blogs

Okay, I've been struggling for quite a while with the power of blogs. My general thoughts were that nobody is really going to be reading this stuff that I'm writing except for members in my class. Then, I made a comment about Elluminate because of my experiences with it. I thought it was a great product. However a colleague told me that they were not impressed with that type of format for online instruction because it was a bandwidth hog. I wrote all of this in a previous blog. Today, I decided to read through and see if anyone had commented on my blogs. I was fully anticipating that only individuals in my class would be the only ones commenting. However, I got a comment from what I think was someone from the company that creates or distributes Elluminate. He provided me with more information about Elluminate and explained that it was designed for educational institutions. He also stated that it was used in developing nations where high speed Internet access was generally not accessable. The results there have been outstanding. As a result, of this experience, I believe that I can put forward my thoughts and reach people way beyond just my immediate world at Texas A&M University- Commerce.

I have also discussed the power of blogs in education with my professor, Dr. Wickersham. She discussed that blogs could be a way of communicating with parents and students. I had not really thought of this as a possible use of blogs and technology. However, if a blog was to be used in this format, it would need to be set up so that only parents and students could only look at it. As a result, privacy would be maintained.