Blog nedir? Ne için kullanılır?

What is a blog and what is it used for? 

What is a blog? 

We see that the word blog comes from the combination of web and log words, web-log. The web is the communication medium that we access through the internet browser. And Log means recording. Over time, it has taken its short form as a blog. When we look at the historical development of the blog, it started in 1997 when a group of programmers published the sites they liked while surfing the internet with short explanatory notes on their own pages. With the emergence and widespread use of easy-to-use tools, this type of note-taking has turned into a different form and transformed into platforms where people can express their opinions on any subject. In the simplest form, it is possible to create pages that only you can see or share with others in blogs that turn into a diary. 

As a result of the evolution and rapid proliferation they have gone through in a short period of time, blogs have started to be considered as another media medium. Blogs have a flexible use of content, from news announcements to commentary, from promoting popular sites to being a medium where communities share their ideas. But if it is to be expressed in a short and general way, it can be said that blogs are announcements and comments on the desired subject. One of the most important factors in the spread of blogs is that they can be prepared much easier than internet sites. After registering on the majority of free websites that offer blogging services, it is not difficult to create pages that can publish your articles in a few steps.

What Is Blog Used For? 

A user-sourced type of website where data entries are made in magazine style and displayed in reverse chronological order, the blog can be thought of as a virtual classroom. People from all over the world can share their ideas and express their thoughts. Teachers can use blogs to provide students with learning opportunities. In addition, classroom blogs can provide easy communication with other teachers who teach the same course, with the authoring system feature that enables creating and editing web pages without the need for file transfer operations and special software without HTML knowledge. 

Providing students with their own blog space can change a lot in the traditional classroom setting. Along with a classroom blog, student blogs can reduce the consumption of paper in the classroom. Students can post their work on their blog for all viewers and teachers to see. One of the positive aspects of using blogs as an online file repository is that students never lose their work again. Gathering all of the students' work in a blog can be a good opportunity to see the student's progress. With blogs, classroom work can be shared transparently with all concerned and parents. 

Computers are more attractive to students than notebooks and books. While the assignments to be prepared in the notebook can be boring for students, blogs can be interesting because they are internet-based applications. In addition, multimedia files such as video and audio recordings that cannot be added to the notebook can be easily added to blogs. The more senses the learning is, the more meaningful and permanent it will be. Blogs can be easily supplemented with multimedia types such as video, audio, graphics, and photos to support learning, thereby providing better learning. In addition, blogs save the learning process from the limitations of time and space. Learning continues from wherever the internet is accessible.

The notes that students keep in the notebook are only up to them. With blogs, students can get the opportunity to learn about each other's research on different topics, learn and evaluate their ideas, thus creating a social learning environment. In addition, students who cannot attend the class in the classroom for various reasons and have difficulty expressing what they want and think because they are excited can convey their thoughts in a more organized way by using their blogs. 

Once students create their blog and start receiving comments, they will understand that they are followed, read, and enjoy this work. Thus, he will continue to update, produce and research his blog. He will attend the lessons not only physically but also with the mental participation dimension that will ensure the permanence of learning. Likewise, students will be delighted to have people from different places and their parents comment on their blog. 

Blogs also provide great advantages for teachers in assessment. It will be very useful to use blogs in the process evaluations developed with the structuralist theory. Because of the crowded classrooms and the high course load for teachers, teachers who have problems in process evaluation can benefit from the ease of use such as the chronological structure of blogs and the ability to save homework on blog pages. In this way, teachers who can monitor student development more closely can give more feedback and guidance to students.