The Educational Value of Blogging
In the early stages, blogs were mostly online diaries sharing girlfriend/boyfriend gossips, personal photos and experiences. As times passed, blogging evolved into a mass phenomenon. The more people getting caught into this blogs galore, the more experiences shared by different personalities. New trends emerged, niche blogs appeared and blogging became what we see today, a hard to perfectly define, segmented concept of online information sharing.
Whether people perceive it as an alternative to classic forms of journalism, tools for self-help, an online job or the simple morning coffee reading, nowadays, blogging has a massive educational value.
Premises of educational blogging
By educational blogging I’m not only talking about edublogs - those blogs maintained by teachers or people involved in the educational system - but also about blogs that provide helpful information on different topics.
People’s constant need for answers to their daily rising questions favored the birth of “how to” blogs. Want to know how to take care of your garden? I’m sure a gardening expert is writing a blog post as you read this. Need some CSS tips and hacks? There are dozens of blogs out there covering the topic.
Our need for information also gave birth to the famous expression “Google it”, and what do we get by googleing our needs? Lots of search results show blog posts covering almost every aspect of topic of interest, more and more with each year that passes; the more people searching for information, the more people blogging about it.
The real value of blogging
Is it the money/earnings factor? Recent polls held by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net and Chris Garrett of ChrisG.com show that only a small part of the blog owners publish content with the “make money online” cliché in mind.
If only a small part blog to earn, then also a small part read to learn about making money from blogging, and even so the make money online niche has a strong self-help/educational factor.
The real value of blogging resides in its power to help people grow their knowledge, beyond the point on our educational systems. Basically, every high-school kid has now access to tons of resources on marketing, PR, programming, business, you name it. The only thing that can make a difference is the reader’s ability to choose and digest the right information.
The wonders of blogging
With blogging, we can be more than what our otherwise natural course of evolution would have made us. Sure, before blogs we still had books, and self-help books were (and still are) best-sellers, but, through blogs, the information access time was drastically reduced.
Why would it be a surprise that what some would consider a simple construction worker (absolutely no pun intended) could launch in a very insightful debate on the current course of the economy or Microsoft’s strategy on acquiring Yahoo? It’s only a matter or personal desire for evolution, for becoming better.
Blogging made me better
That’s why I love blogging and that’s why I joined the blogosphere. I know that my experience could be useful to at least a few people out there. In return, I know I have lots of amazing things to learn from you, my readers, my commentators.
This is what keeps us together as a community, our similar interests and desire to evolve, this is the educational value of blogging.
Photo credits to Sanja Gjenero
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I agree! I have learned A LOT from blogs in the last several years. Stuff I couldn’t get from books, even.
I finished up a master’s degree in professional writing last fall, but since I’m not working in that field, I use my blog to keep my writing skills sharp.
What’s funny is that in my modern rhetorical theory class we had an edublog, and I hated it! But now I see the educational value (both in school and out), and I feel like an idiot for not embracing that class’s blog.
Dude, do only people named Sara care to comment on this?
I think blogging’s value in education is that brand new and incredibly specific topics can be covered, most of which just wouldn’t work in a traditional book format. Tiny audiences can be catered to, which is wonderful.
Blogging is very educational, I agree. And we can benefit from people who would otherwise not have an opportunity to voice their opinion to thousands. Getting a book deal, or publishing a magazine article is usually only accomplished by the very few. This is a result of a variety of reasons. The fact remains, however, that bloggers have very compelling things to teach their readers. It’s a medium open for all. It’s wonderful to learn from others via the blogosphere.
“The real value of blogging resides in its power to help people grow their knowledge”
Couldn’t agree more with the above statement. The main benefit of blogging is amount of knowledge that you acquire through researching and writing posts and being part of the blogging community.
In my opinion those starting blogging to make money would do better if they started an actual website, and perhap make the blog a small part of the whole site.
Hello and welcome to all new readers and commentators on Blogsessive.
I’m really glad to see that more people appreciate the educational value of blogs, as I do.
@Sarah, Sarah Jo & Sara: Did you talk to each other before posting?
This is indeed a funny coincidence.
Personally, I learn a lot about writing by blogging. Although I have commercial plan for my blog, but I believe in the long run those who are passionate about the topic will win.
Blogging is a great way to teach and learn new ideas instanteneously. It’s also a nice way to provide geographical independence if successful.