Week 2: Is this the blog I can trust?

 

Hello and welcome to my blog :) 

Today we are going to talk about how to judge whether a learning technology blog is an advertisement or a review.


First of all, it is important to note that as English teachers in today's society, we are introduced to different technologies all the time. Before we actually use them into our classrooms, we need to refer to the reviews and summaries of other English teachers before deciding if they are suitable for our content. Therefore, browsing technology blogs plays an important role in our decisions.

 

As English teachers, we prefer our information come from authentic, critical, peer reviews from a teacher's perspective. However, not all blogs will provide enough useful information for English teachers and we need to judge for ourselves.

 

 Take the following blogs as an example: https://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/

(screenshot was taken from https://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/) 

At first look, the layout of this blog is clear and the 'for English language teachers' under the title tells teachers that they have come to the right place. The text is short, but the blogger uses bullet points to convey the various functions and benefits of the app. It is worth noting that only the advantages of the product are pointed out in the text and not the disadvantages, which should be noted. In the added video, the speaker demonstrates the content and usage of the product. For me, this video is more like a company advertisement for the product, so it only presents what it should like in the ideal situation rather than in a the actual teaching practice.


Target audience

This is one of the reasons we judge whether a product blog can be useful to us or not. In the example blog, the title clearly shows that this is for English teachers, so English teachers are part of the target audience. Why the ‘part of’? Because the fact that the content only shows the advantages indicates that the product company is also expected to read this blog, so the product company is also part of the target audience, and perhaps a very important one. So can the blog really be used by us when we are not the primary reader? Or can we trust the it completely?


Summary

Of course, technology review blogs can only be used as a reference, and as English teachers, in the actual teaching, we have the ability to select the most appropriate technology products for our content and students.

 

 

The following video is one that I have found useful in making a tech product review blog:




Thank you for reading this. Please feel free to leave your comments and thoughts about my blog. See you next week :)


Comments

  1. Lively English26 January 2023 at 12:25

    Hi Jingyi,
    An insightful review! Thanks for sharing how to differentiate between a real review and an advert. Looking forward to your future posts.
    Phyo

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yu Zhong26 January 2023 at 13:14

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yu Zhong26 January 2023 at 13:15

      Hi Jingyi.

      Thank you for posting such a well-structured and meaningful blog. I like the title of your blog, it really entices me to look for answers in your writing. However, perhaps it would be better to change the "I" in the title to "you"? i.e., Is this the blog you can trust? Because maybe not every reader is interested in whether or not you can trust a particular blog. This is just my personal opinion, I hope it helps you.

      Yu

      Delete
  3. Tilly31 January 2023 at 15:08

    Hi Jingyi Well done for starting your blog and I like your first post title - a good question! I also like the issue you are considering within your blog - what makes us trust a blog? Nik Peachy's is good example since as you notice he is promoting his own products so his blog tends to be positive and promotional rather than objective and skeptical. It's important to establish trust with your reader and I think you have done that with your first post here so well done! You found an interesting video to embed but interestingly he was promoting the web hoster and admitted that they were paying him to do that... I suppose it's hard to find truly objective bloggers (except in our module :-)!) Keep up the great blog!

    ReplyDelete

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