This is not my first time blogging for this course. Last semester I took IS449 with professor Drake and we had the same requirement for blogging. At times it seems difficult to come up with ideas to blog about but as the semester progresses it gets easier.
This is a writing intensive course but there are huge benefits from the class blog. This is a great way to share ideas, trouble shoot problems, and find resources. Many of the things I worked on last semester were done with the help of others through blogging.
It only takes a few minutes to write a few paragraphs and share information. Then you have an entire class working together to make that information more useful with feedback. It is very important to keep up with your blogs every week because they are worth a large portion of your grade.
This course is writing intensive and we are required to blog at the IS449 blog site shown below. The idea is that knowledge discovery is aided by allowing the largest number of people to participate. Well thought out posts and intelligent comments lead to the greatest growth in knowledge to all involved.
It has been a few weeks now since we started blogging and the growth in knowledge is easy to see. Many of the blog posts have been a very helpful resource when working on our projects. There has been a variety of topics with useful information.
Thank you to all who have worked hard and took the time to share their ideas.
It seems that more and more businesses and school courses require blogging. Blogging is a great place to learn about new topics and to share information.
I took the course IS247 Introduction to Web Application Development a few semesters ago with professor Bud Gibson. That course was also writing intensive and required blogging. We used the learning remix site to post our blogs. It was the first time I had ever blogged and I found it very useful to discuss the topics of the course.
I think that blogging will continue to grow and become a requirement for most school courses and businesses in the future. Not only is it a great place to share information but it is great way to have class discussions and get multiple opinions and feedback.
Although I would choose just about anything over writing a lengthy research paper, I have never really "blogged" before so this may take some getting used to. Prior to this class when I heard the word blogging I mainly thought of two things; 1) Sports journalists writing opinion pieces that don't quite make the final cut for the newspaper http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/terryfosterblog/index.php. 2) People with nothing better to do than write about where their favorite celebrity had breakfast yesterday morning http://www.perezhilton.com/. While there is nothing wrong with either of these things, or at least the first one, I can honestly say I never thought that I would be blogging as part of the capstone class for my CIS degree.
After a simple Google search on blogging revealed just shy of 700 million matches, I quickly realized how widespread blogging is. There are blogs on everything from sports to politics to religion to yes...celebrity gossip. I then narrowed my search down to "benefits of blogging" thinking there might be some article about how blogging has been scientifically proven to make people better writers or improve vocabulary or something like that...
While I did not find any such articles, I was surprised at what I did find. Nearly every result had something to do with how blogging is increasingly being used as a cheap and effective marketing tool. Having gone through the marketing program here at Eastern I know that the marketing budget for many companies is often VERY limited so anytime there is a cheap opportunity to create business, companies will pounce on it. I don't recall much, if any, mention of this strategy when I graduated a couple years ago so I'm guessing that this concept is fairly new.
Essentially a business owner will start a blog either on their website or as part of a blog community like the one we are using. They can communicate directly to their customers and get feedback on products, policy, etc. They can also comment on other blogs that may have some relation to their products/services and possibly grow their business and find new customers. Now obviously this is more personal with small businesses and Bill Gates is not going to personally talk to you about how you like the new version of Windows, but even companies like Microsoft have blogs which keep their customers informed about new products and updates.
I have attached a quick little video by Direct Horizon which explains some of the business benefits of blogging.
This is not my first time blogging for this course. Last semester I took IS449 with professor Drake and we had the same requirement for blogging. At times it seems difficult to come up with ideas to blog about but as the semester progresses it gets easier.
