Educational Bridges through Blogs · Global Voices
Rosario Lizana

Blogs entering the field of education empower schoolteachers, who are separated by the geography of Chile, to communicate with each other in ways that previously were not so accessible.
The blog “Educandonos” (ES) seeks to give schoolteachers a different, participative view of education. The purpose is to use blogs as a platform for a new way of communication. The blog also features a guide (ES) to Chilean Schools with blogs, and a list (ES) of Chilean school teachers with blogs throughout the country. Benjamin Pérez (ES) is a schoolteacher in Castro, Chiloé Island, who posts about his adventures teaching in the provinces. The guide also features blogs from schoolteachers from Coquimbo (ES), Arica (ES), Llanquihe (ES) and the capital, Santiago, where the guide began.
How does this affect students?  In universities, a six month certificate course, led by designer Rodrigo Walker (ES) and a group of experts, introduced blogs as a resource for students to bring added value to their market offer.  Students had the opportunity to learn, step by step, how to build and manage a blog and the consequential benefits of design in creating an identity.  Rodrigo Walker promotes this to “change the orientation of education from knowledge to action” and believes that the “only way to make a change in education is to change the context of where it is.” The results from the 27 students in the course are already apparent: one of the students is now a finalist in a competition by 3M, another services and contacts clients using blogs, and others are specializing in selling identity through blog design concepts. For more information, click here.