As a primary school teacher, education blogs dedicated to the sharing of resources and expertise have enriched my teaching, not only by means of their wealth of innovative, concrete ideas for the classroom but, by simply opening my mind to new opinions and approaches. Admittedly, apart from a tentative weebly creation (http://exploreidentity.weebly.com/), I have hitherto been more of a taker than a giver in this blog-post respect.
As a postgraduate university student, however, I cannot be the equivalent of a social media ‘lurker’. It is imperative that I participate in a ‘value-creation process’ – not that which is readily turning the wheels of Instagram in current times (Casaló, 2018), but the academic equivalent thereof, whereby engagement in constructive conversation with our academic peers is perceived as essential for development and extension of mutual learning.
Blogs can be a useful facilitator in this respect: they require the contributor to summarise and articulate ideas coherently, blog readers are provided with the means to respond and discuss content matter, and the nature of the online blog means that contributions can be made remotely, thus facilitating meaningful interactions.
Gilster, when coining the term ‘digital literacy’ in 1997, described it as ‘the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers’ (Fulton & McGuinness, 2016). In light of this, publishing through blogs is both a straightforward and versatile way of engaging in learning through digitally-literate means.
References:
Casaló, L.V. (2018). Influencers on Instagram: Antecedents and consequences of opinion leadership. Journal of Business Research. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.005
Fulton, C., & McGuinness, C. M. (2016). Digital detectives: Solving information dilemmas in an online world. Cambridge, MA, USA. doi:10.1016/C2014-0-02094-1
Rachael Kinkead (18202251) 