Article Review

The Impact of Using Blogs on College Students' Reading Comprehension and Learning Motivation

I found this article to be very informative in the area of digital technology and college students.  With the implantation of "New Literacy, future college students will be better prepared for the digital learning atmosphere.  Although I have been exposed to technology as a young adult, I am not as familiar or efficient in the areas of digital technology that some of my students are.  This supports the articles view on the importance of digital education in the school setting.  We as educators need to prepare our students to the challenges that they will be facing in the future.  This includes the movement of digital media into the workforce and college settings.

I have never used a blog until this class and I see the benefits that are described in the article about  use of blogs to support college reading instruction.  I enjoy the opportunity to quickly and easily share my thoughts and projects with my classmates and instructors by a click of a mouse.  I have to admit, at first I was a little skeptical about the whole idea of blogs because I am not a fan of social networking but blogs are effective in the educational setting. I have talked to ELA teachers about the benefits of blogs in the classroom and some seem to be willing to try the new idea.  I enjoy the sense of community that the blogs offer for an online class like ours.  Now you can bring the classroom into your students homes with uses of blogs!

I find the results of the experiment in the article fascinating and surprisingly accurate when I think about it.  The fact that the data indicated that there was a significant difference between the two groups of students in the areas of reading performance, motivation, and retention rate is impressive.  I never would have thought that using blogs would be so beneficial to educational learning environments.  I am excited to begin using blogs in my own classroom to see if I experience the same positive results.