Well, one of my assignments is to find a blog to write about on a subject of my choosing. At first I was nervous and stuck to the topic of education and technology. I surfed around for a while, and while there were some decent ones, none really stood out as fantastic. So I decided to not stay one dimensional and branch out and look up topics that are a passion of mine. With that I looked to my oldest passion (even before my love of history) herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians). One quick google search later and I found the blog of my choice “That ReptileBlog”.
At first glance I was in love with this blog, because it is dedicated on sharing important care information regarding herps. There were many articles I could choose from but I’m going to go with an article on a proper aquarium set up for semi-aquatic turtles as an example. The information given is accurate even if I am not thrilled with several of the products that are listed to use on the post. These items do have a link to sites where a visitor can see what the author means and even purchase them from a retailer’s website. This is when I became nervous about this site. I have around 20 years of semi-aquatic turtle experience, and have seen several of the products that the author listed, and have not been a fan of them. The reason being is that some of them are not large enough to accommodate many adult turtles, or in the case of one product which I did use, can be easily torn apart by an adult turtle. It was upon a little more investigating I noticed that all the links led to the same retailer’s website. Granted it shouldn’t have been that hard to spot, as right under the blog’s title they wrote who sponsored the site. I viewed this blog as a site with an agenda, to promote the purchasing of pet supplies from thatpetplace.com. However to instantly distrust it for this reason seemed rather ridiculous when I thought on it, since all blogs have some agenda to push. Anyone surfing around and reading blogs need to keep this in mind and learn who to take seriously and who needs to be fact checked. The fact that this site is run by a business makes it a perfect candidate to be scrutinized as such. On one hand the information needs to be factual, as misinformation would give the company a bad name and alienate itself from its customers. However some information can be left out (like maybe…better products) in the intrest of directing a customer to purchase their goods. Also in all fairness the blog does post less expensive alternatives, such as a large plastic tub as opposed to a glass aquarium sold by them.
This site also has other redeeming qualities that tells me it is not only and advertisement platform. For one it has interesting articles posted for people who are genuinely passionate about the subject such as how people can be involved in changing laws regarding animal exportation, or new facts being discovered about herps. There is also a page that has links to other herpetology related websites that visitors can go to for further herprelated reading. It’s these qualities that I later looked for that made me a fan of this blog spot. The author fits the criteria that I feel Richardson put forth, that writings are based on sources on the internet, which are linked to, and promote the creation of a network of like-minded people.
On a final note, this blog while its links to products is nothing new, it did spring to mind an added use for blogs in the educational setting. While I took Richardson’s point of making links as an idea to site your information, it also can be a great way to differentiate a lesson. Links can also be used to explain much more basic information that perhaps the teacher hopes people in class already know. This way, students who already know what “parliament” is for example do not have to waste their time reading the definition or history of it. Students where this word maybe new to them however, could click on a link embedded in the word and be able to update themselves as to avoid confusion. This to me just reinforced the usefulness of web 2.0 in the educational setting. Students who may lack basic prior knowledge can be given a chance to keep pace with the more advanced students due to the use of these links.
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