The blogging experience....

Advantages:
Having the blog throughout the course allowed for some great reflection on the things we were learning each week. Whilst I gave many of the tools thought and consideration actually putting this into written words makes you think about it one step further.
Drawbacks:
They can be time consuming. Hours could be lost looking for things to add to the blog, reading others, making comments, and adding my own posts. I sometimes found them tricky to manage as well, flicking from different pages and logging in all the time. For discussion of one themed topic I have a preference for discussion boards in place of blogs, this way the one flow of discussion stays in the same place.
My public voice:
Finding a voice was a little difficult. This had a lot to do with not yet knowing what I wanted to use my blog for (a resource page, store holder, or online journalling). Without realising my page quickly became one for reflection and as a result served more as a personal journalling experience than a page that offered insight or required questioning from other people. It became more of a palce for me to pool together my ideas and beliefs on the issues of technology in education.
Usefulness:
I enjoyed reflecting personally on issues of the course and I think this is the obvious trend of my blog. The feedback from peers was appreciated and it was nice to know that someone was listening to my opinions and thoughts. I enjoyed logging onto my blog and seeing new comments.
It was however sometimes difficult to comment on other peoples blogs. Often posts were lengthy and hard to follow depending on the type of online voice they had. I assume this would be the same trend for students - possibly avoiding blogs that are not similar to their own due to them being too difficult to understand.
Embedding links:
Once you knew how, this was an extremely easy tool to utilise, and one I could imagine younger years students being able to do. Personally, I do not spend a lot of time searching the net for resources and as a result this has not been reflected in my blog. For teaching purposes you could easily have students find 1-2 items on a certain topic to collect for their blog.
Next time:
I had not blogged before and I had never been someone who eveen journalled so this was a new and unique experience for me. In blogging again in the future I think it would very much depend on the context. It was recently bought to our attention that a blog like this could be used in our teaching portfolio to demonstrate our tech knowledge. Had I known this earlier perhaps I would have taken a more professional approach to my blog and used this to represent some of me newly acquired tech skills. However, blogs could still be used in what I still think their traditional sense is - an online diary/journal with students detailing their reflections on the week or certain tasks.

I have used my blog as a place to reflect on the things we have discussed in our course this semester. I have tried to connect the new tools we have discussed with how I might use them in my teaching with students. The blog was a nice place for me to really stop, think, and make connections between these new technologies and teaching opportunities.