Enhance your college experience with blogs

Enhance your college experience with blogs

From online classes to PDF files of scholarly journals, the Internet helps college students overcome barriers to their education. Communication is easier and faster than ever before. Now, many students are turning to blogs to enhance their learning. A blog — short for “Web log” — is an online diary with periodical entries and interactive content, such as the ability to post comments or vote in polls.

Several blogs are tailored specifically to college students. One example is Blog U, a section of the website, Inside Higher Ed, which offers posts on subjects ranging from student affairs to administration to going green. Among these blogs is University of Venus, a blog for Generation X women in higher education. Contributors from across the globe submit stories that give insight to the reader. In the recent post “So What Are You Going To Be When You Grow Up?” Deanna England mused, “Often I think that students can get immersed in the concept of what they’re supposed to do. What they should take to get further in life. But occasionally there’s simply the idea of education as a joyful experience — one that can enrich you as a person and broaden your view on the world.” You can visit University of Venus and all Blog U’s journals at www.insidehighered.com/blogs.

Some students even post their own blogs for the world to see. One blog, Because I Wish I Could Stare Out Into the Ocean, chronicles the life of Irwin Allen, a college student up to his recent graduation. He wrote in a March 2010 post, “With about nine weeks left until the end, I can say that the most important lessons that I have learned in college didn’t come from any classroom or lecture hall.” You can read Irwin’s blog at http://www.irwinallen.wordpress.com/.

If you are interested in starting your own blog, the process is easy:
1. Set up an account with a blogging site. Platforms like Wordpress.com, Blogger.com and Livejournal.com allow you to change the layout of your blog, from text size to background color to menu design.
2. Post on your blog. Write about something that is important to you. Some blogs are about news or hobbies, and some are just about the daily life of the writer. Many bloggers like to use media like photos and videos in their posts and with many blogging platforms you can add this content with a couple of clicks of your mouse.
3. Follow other blogs whose content interests you. Several platforms allow you to click a “follow” or “friend” button that allows recent posts from your favorite blogs to show up when you log into the platform’s site.
4. Publicize your blog. Tell your friends you have started a blog. Put the link in your e-mail signature or on your business card. Submit your blog to search engines. Some platforms allow you to link your blog to social networking sites so that, every time you update your blog, it posts a link on your Facebook or Twitter account.

With Internet being such a great form of communication, it’s no wonder that students would read and even write their own blogs to enhance their college experience. The only thing the blogging community is missing is you.