Blogs' Potentialities in Learning

Abstract

Growing literature on the impact of new technologies on learning processes suggests that blogs can be effective tools to empower cognition. The chapter describes a line of research which is aimed at exploring the possibility that blogging is related to cognitive skills and can be effectively used in educational settings. In the main study reported in the paper fifty blogs were analysed and classified according to both their content and formal structure. The right (i.e., intuitive-holistic) vs. left (i.e., systematic-analytical) thinking style of blog owners was also assessed, as well as the blog owners' awareness of the psychological processes, activated by the blog that they had devised, both in their own and in other people's mind. Results showed that blog owners are able to use effective communication strategies by differentiating the formal structure of bogs according to the content, but they lack metacognitive awareness about the mental processes activated by the blog. No relation between the blog owner's cognitive style and blog style was found. Implications for the educational use of blogs are discussed. In other two studies such implications were tested in samples of teachers and students. Blogs' potentialities to enhance metacognitive awareness and control in both teachers and students, as well as cooperative learning in students,were critically evaluated. Altogether, results from this research line provide evidence that blogging can be useful to foster cognitive skills in education by empowering the bloggers' awareness of the implied mental processes.