The Net Generation is upon the instructional community.  Their entire lives have been a constant interaction with technology; internet, IM, email, chat rooms, text messaging, cell phones.  The layers upon layers of multimedia the X Gen and older took to be wizbang stuff, the Net Geners now take for basic tools of life.

To them its not even technology, in the same manner anyone over 30 doesn’t see the electricity that comes into your house as technology.  Its just an ever present, ever-expected aspect of life.  If anything, all these text avenues of communication have increased the Net Gen’s abilities to be writers (noted at weblog-ed).

Blogging, the ability to not only distribute your content to millions, but to open a dialog to expand upon what you’ve written has great potential.

As the University of Houston pointed out, Instructors can use blogs to:

• Content-related blog as professional practice
• Networking and personal knowledge sharing
• Instructional tips for students
• Course announcements and readings
• Annotated links
• Knowledge management

Students can use blogs to:

•  Reflective or writing journals
• Knowledge management
• Assignment submission and review
• Dialogue for groupwork
• E-portfolios
• Share course-related resources

“A vlog is a weblog which uses video as its primary presentation format. It is primarily a medium for distributing video content. Vlog posts are usually accompanied by text, image, and additional Meta data to provide a context or overview for the video. 

-         Wikipedia A vlog is a video log - a video record, or journal, or progress report - www.vlogblog.com 

Why video?

It’s a more successful medium to grab your audience. It’s a passive experience rather than an active one.  Even reading takes effort.  IN the same manner television killed newspapers as the mass populaces’ source for information and entertainment, vlogs will replace the blog.

As Michael Pollock references in his “video blog” blog that this form of communication is limited only by your imagination to promote and deliver content.

Not that blogs will die out.  There will always be an audience for the impact and resonance of a well-crafted phrase.

From a production standpoint, the reasons for using video originate at two ends of the effort spectrum:

1. Immediacy and ease of creation – old school, Verbal journal, just sit in front of a camera and shoot…
2. Increased productions values/abilities to illustrate content – professional television segments, better production values means more engaging.