Learning Through Blogs
Introduction
In 2020, the world was shaken by the emergence of a mysterious virus known as COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019). The emergence of this virus was first discovered in the city of Wuhan, China at the end of December 2019. This virus spreads very quickly and has spread to almost all countries, including Indonesia, in just a few months.
Changes in the field of education
Various areas of life have felt the impact of this virus, including economics, industry, health and so on. The sector that is also affected by the emergence of this virus is the education sector. Ministries in various countries have taken steps in every school and university to conduct learning via the internet. Learning that originally used a face-to-face PBM system has changed to using an online learning system. The transition from face-to-face learning to online is certainly forcing various parties to be able to follow the process and flow, so that the learning system continues to run well. However, it turns out that this system is not working as effectively as imagined, in fact all parties are experiencing difficulties, not only students, parents, teachers and the government are also feeling it. This online learning has a huge impact, both positive and negative impacts. As we can see, not all of society is technologically literate, including teachers, students and parents who are still in the adaptation stage to current technological advances.
Online learning support application
Various applications are used by teachers to support the implementation of online learning, some use Moodle LMS
, Schoology, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Personal Blog
, and so forth. Of course, the use of this application is adjusted to your needs and readiness to utilize and use the application.
Learning using blogs and Moodle LMS
The author himself, as a teacher, uses a personal blog and Moodle LMS to carry out online learning to students. The Moodle LMS that has been created is connected to the blog that is owned so that students do not have too much difficulty accessing the material and questions because it has been provided in the blog and Moodle itself.
Benefits of learning using blogs
The benefits of blogs as a medium and learning resource include the following:
- Blog as a home for learning and sharing teachers. This means that teachers' creativity and passion can be channeled through blogs, such as creativity in writing and other works. Because print media is quite limited in containing our writings, blogs can be an outlet for writing creativity because they can be published directly without editing.
- Blogs can lighten teachers' duties and burdens in teaching. Blogs will make it easier for teachers because everything can be included in the blog. For example, lesson materials, student assignments, student grade information. While students can easily download it without being limited by time and space. This method can certainly save time, energy and costs.
- Blogs can increase students' interest in learning. With a blog, a teacher can post a problem or lesson material that is structured in formal but more relaxed language. Then students can blogwalk to the blog and teaching and learning activities can become more fun. Study material posted via blog media can become great content that is useful for the progress of the world of education.
- Blogs can be accessed by anyone in the world. With blogs, teachers can share learning material not only with their students, but also with anyone who needs their ideas wherever they are, easily and cheaply.
- Blogs can be a medium for friendship. Blogs can be used as a means to meet indirectly and communicate with each other because blogs can be accessed by anyone throughout the world.
