Purpose of this Blog

This blog was created as an assignment for the Multimedia course (525). Now that the course has been concluded, I have been wondering what to do with this blog. I have decide to continue to use this blog, but shift its focus to science education, which is very relevant for me as I plan to teach science. There is no need to change the title, as it is just as appropriate, or probably more so, for the new focus. I will keep the archive entries, as well as the links to the other 525 blogs as some of them may be updated as well. I have created a page on my wiki site that is a collection of science education links, and I have connection to this under the Other Links section. Additional links that I could add to this blog in the future could include other science education blogs, and possibly direct links to other science education websites (instead of via the Wiki site).
The 525 course demonstrated some of the ways blogs could be used in education. One that looks quite useful is that of current events. Students and teachers could use a blog to point out and discuss news stories and events. In science education this is very helpful because it would be a good way of keeping track of new discoveries, which occur very frequently as science is very dynamic. For instance, I am currently taking an astronomy course, and at the begining of each class the professor discusses relevant science news stories about research and discoveries. A blog would be another way of doing this, and with this blog I could practice doing so. There are different formats that could be used for such a blog. It might be an individual blog. Under this setup, everyone would have their own individual blog on which they would handle all the posts. This could potentially be done with only the teacher, bloging. The advantage of the blog for the teacher is that it could be used the blog to demonstrate news items rather than simply telling the students about them in class. But a more constructivist and better idea would be for all the students to have their own indiviual blog, in addition to the teacher. Each student could use their blog to discuss science news. This could mean focusing on one article, as we did with the blogs in the 525 class, or one one topic or a more general dicussion of several topics the students consider relevant and newsworthy. The students might be required to make an entry once a week, as was the case with the 525 class. This could be done by having it due on the same day for all the students, or staggering them so that each day in the week would have some students doing an entry. Using blogs in this manner would allow for looking at new events closely and for not needing as much class time to do so. Another way blogs could be used in class would be to have students look at, reflect, and write about topics or areas highlighted or directed by the teacher. This was the predominate use of the blogs in the 525 class. Both uses of the blogs could also have the students read and post comments on each other's blogs. I am about to start a course on science teaching methods (514) and material and ideas from that course will probably end up on this blog. But the blog should continue with the same focus past that class as it will still be relevant. The new focus and purpose of this blog is to practice using blogs for science education. In my case, that will mean focusing more on secondary education level material. This would have some impact on the types of articles and sources, and would probably allow for more options than earlier levels.