I began this blog by researching what a blog is. According to wikipedia.org, a blog is a discussion or informational information site published on the internet. Blogging emerged in the late 1990s, many of these provide commentary or analysis on a particular subject area; some function as personal online diaries; micro-blogging featuring very short posts, while others function as online advertising of an individual or a company. A standard blog is composed of text, images, and hyperlinks to other blogs, Web pages, and other social media related to the topic. Some blogs have ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format. There is a wide variety of blogs: textual, art, photography, videos, music, and podcasts. In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources.
Some of the impact of blogging on our society and issues related to blogging revolve around legal and social consequences; such as: liability, defamation, employment, political dangers, personal safety, and behavior.
I have had some very brief and limited experience with blogs prior to this assignment. I have had so much fun exploring all of the different varieties of blogs that exist. Back in 2010, I tried starting a blog with a fellow UNM Lobo regarding some social justice issues but it never really took off. We both had a lot of transitions taking place with graduations and hadn't really thought about it since up until this assignment. I began by looking at blogs around education, policy and politics. I even registered to be on the mailing list of 6 education blogs and 2 political blogs and this is only the beginning. I’m sure that with some more familiarity I will begin to use blogs as a means of knowledge distribution on topics I am interested in that will arrive straight into my email.
Some of the problems I had were around privacy and finding a name for my blog. I had a really hard time coming up with a name. I wanted to name it after the book I will be blogging about but my boyfriend said that might be infringing on the books copyright. So, then I wanted to name it 'Z.Education' or 'A-Z Thoughts on ELL Ed' but my initials look like AZ, and I’m not a big fan of AZ’s education policies. Finally I arrived at: Alvarez, Z. Academic Language Diary. I named it this because my book of choice is Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers by Freedman & Freedman. I also had some trouble getting used to navigating the webpages, formatting, finding a theme, and deciding on a layout.
The best blog I found was the National Education Policy Center blog
I think blogging might have a positive effect on my reading and writing in school because it's expanding my interests and allowing me to have an apprenticeship through a blogging medium empowering me to develop proficiency in a second discourse.
The issue that concerns me about blogging is privacy. I have a personal blog around my civil rights activism aimed to help guest contributors remain anonymous. So as a result, I was skeptical about creating a new blog on the same email. A quality blog is composed of good commentary, varied literary or data sources, consistent blog posts, and use of different mediums of information such as picture, video, and podcasts.
Blog entries are probably between 400 and 700 words in order to maintain your audiences attention.
