Thing # 4

Discovering Blogging

One of the things I noticed about the genre of blog writing is that there are many different types of blogs, and many different kinds of blog posts. Bloggers can incorporate many different types of posts into their writing, or limit themselves to just one type. I think that is a matter of preferences and choices.

I think that blog reading and writing are different form other types of reading and writing because of the interactive format of blogs. Both readers and writers can interact with others in the topics they are interested by leaving comments and exposing their thoughts.

Commenting contributes to the writing and meaning-making because it adds a new perspective or point of view to the discussion of the topic. It can also be a mean by which bloggers get more information about a topic they like.

It is more than evident that blogging facilitate learning, because you do not only read and gather information about an specific subject, but by contributing and commenting in others blogs you are prone to reflect on what you are reading and meaningfully express your thoughts about the topic that has been presented to you.

In response to the exploratory reading, there were a couple of blogs that I found very interesting. In one of them, Dan Mayer explains his point of view about math homework making me wonder if as teachers we take some time to think about the purpose of homework or we just throw it at their students randomly and with no reason whatsoever. In the other blog, Dr. Joyce Valenza warns us about how to avoid a mediocre PowerPoint presentation, making me aware of the importance of delivering information in an engaging format.