Blogs

I thought the podcast we listened to for class was pretty interesting. It's amazing to me how many people are now using blogs to get their messages across.

One thing that worries me when it comes to all of the information we post online is that students will think that much of what they read may be used as legitimate research sources. I see it with my own students in a writing course I teach. My students have little or no idea how to differentiate between legitimate sites and sites put out there by people with no credentials. Blogging gives voice to people who want to be heard - on any topic at all - and that's a great thing, but I do believe we have to find a way to distinguish. I also believe blogs can be very valuable tools for educational purposes.

One other thing mentioned very briefly in the podcast we listened to worried me as well. The host of the podcast mentioned that the NSA gave tons of funding to harvest the information from people's Web pages to develop profiles on people. I find it very scary that we're putting so much information about ourselves out there for anyone to see.