When blogging first started in the late 1990s, it did not catch on right away but by early 2000s it was the next big thing. At first bloggers had to know and understand HTML but soon sites like Blogger.com came along providing templates that allowed people to write what they wanted without worrying about design.
In one article I found, the author said, “The flood of online content has become a tsunami.” When blogs were new, he tried to keep up with all of those pertaining to his work in employment law and HR, but that soon became impossible and he had to give up as the blogging world exploded with new bloggers jumping on the bandwagon at every turn.
The author of another article I found says she blogs as a way to connect. Instead of publishing her family memoirs, she blogs so she can get more exposure than she would writing a book found in a library. She does not blog for the masses, but for the lost family member who will someday come across her blog in an online search.
School districts want students to be computer and Internet savvy by the end of eighth grade. Classroom blogging has become a popular and effective way to accomplish this. One of the articles I found about classroom blogging is about a project that did not work out as well as planned. In the Talkback Project, middle school students were supposed to be posting as they read their novel but soon unrelated links and topics were being posted and discussed so the blog had to stop. Students complained and one even said, ““By taking away our access to the Talkback Project blog, you have taken away my voice.” They wished the unrelated posts were removed instead of the entire blog. When the blog was canceled, the classroom went to a written journal between the kids and their teacher that the students compared to Dark Age torture. Using computers to blog helped them learn to write in a way they found enjoyable but when they went back to using paper and pen writing was no longer fun.
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