Blogs for process AND product: Technology facilitating the journaling and 'hardcopy' in artwork assessment

Rheingold (2008) has said that 'learning to use online forums, be they social network services like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, or wikis, is not a sexily contemporary add-on to the curriculum'it's an essential part of the literacy today's youth require for the world they inhabit.' This presentation describes the use of blogs in a Postgraduate program where Early Childhood educators engage in the process of creating an artwork. The students in the program facilitate learning for very young children on a daily basis (who will be the 'youth' Rheingold refers to) but rarely undertake the creative process themselves. The assessment task requires them to journal their thoughts; undertake a progressively thought-provoking work of art; and share this with peers and assessors. In the past this process would have involved a lot of hard-copy where the student needed to think small enough to post their work through 'snail mail' and only have the academic assessor see what they achieved.