Traditionally, the role of universities and professors has been more or less limited to lecturing and conducting research. Recently, communication technologies have transformed the lives and habits of people, especially students and professors. To meet the resulting demands for adapting technology, there is a global push toward web presence as an indicator of the quality of major universities. Regardless of this pressure, I think the decision to create and maintain a professional blog partly depends on how much a professor wants to present and open him/herself to the new world that is less dependent on time and place and is entirely run by the use of communication technologies.
Expectations from a university professor are now far more than what they were in the past. Professors also work in very different ways from a typical industrial employee. Professors are the international leaders in their own fields who should constantly travel to all over the world and engage in private and public initiatives. As a result of all the changes, they necessarily have a much larger audience, ranging from students to government officials who communicate with the professor and should be aware of his/her activities.
Obviously, a professor’s blog is not a place to share his/her personal life. Rather blogs are media through which professors archive their past work, announce their ongoing activities and propose their future directions. I think the need for maintaining a blog in the age of communication technologies partly stems from the fact that social media (e.g., Facebook, Youtube, etc.) limit the abilities and the audience of a professor due to their commercial nature and intended purposes. Blogs are only managed by their owners and are visible to the public, at any time and at any place, and this global visibility and transparency is a very unique characteristic of our time.

Good topic! I think your post could be divided into three sections: learning as a child, learning as an adult, and learning through social media. I think there are some factors (e.g., cost, environment, method, benefit, etc.) that affect a child’s or an adult’s motivation for learning. Child’s learning usually has no cost associated with it. A child is normally motivated to learn because in the case of failure he/she does not pay a cost unless there is a punishment (which could be hard to avoid by many parents). It seems that brain control centers become more activated when older children and adults receive negative feedback because they need to figure out why something went wrong (1). Also, compared to children, older children and adults associate more cost (e.g., money, responsibility, shame, etc.) to failure because they have a better understanding of the consequences. As the cost of learning and doing wrong increases, the motivation for learning decreases. Based on this association, Europian schools are eliminating their formal grading and scheduling system. Instead, they are letting the child learn without the traditionally associated cost (low grades, punishment by parents, etc.). Also, they are letting the children decide what they want to do (e.g., courses, assignments, etc.) and when (e.g., take an exam) and call it “free learning”. So, the elementary and secondary school system is already changing to allow for more flexibility and motivation. However, many higher education professors still follow the traditional models which are more or less incompatible with the new generation’s (millennials’) habits and learning styles. That’s why so many professors have problems with the use of technology in the classroom and find it annoying. I think higher education is still in a transition period. Providing for the use of technology in the classroom is in its early stages. I believe the next generation of professors will make a better use of networked learning and communication technology as primary or supplementary educational tools.

1- https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/family-affair/200809/rewards-are-better-punishment-here-s-why
2- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down

Good topic! I usually don’t blame communication technology for creating a distraction. Rather, I blame the disengaging boring atmosphere and environment that is already present in the class. My understanding is that engagement itself is an outcome of the interplay of several factors, e.g., course content, teaching method, teacher’s competency, class size, etc. If these factors are strong enough to make the class an interesting one (proper class size, effective teacher, etc.), chances are high that every student is engaged even when he/she possesses a device. Sometimes the most boring content could be delivered with such passion and expertise that grab everyone’s attention. This physics class (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FfKaIgArJ8) is an example. Before we blame technology, we may need to ask questions such as “what percentage of professors deliver their course content with passion and competency?”, “what percentage deliver their course content in the most boring traditional ways?”, ‘How many professors bother themselves to make their classes interesting like that physics professor did?” etc. If the students’ perception is that a professor is simply repeating or reading from a set of slides in the most boring way, they feel they do not need it. Therefore, they become disinterested and disengaged because they do not find a value in listening regardless of having immediate access to a device or not. On the other hand, there are many educational applications (e.g., Kahoot) that are quite engaging especially for freshman students. In short, my opinion is that if the professor sets proper strategies to deal with technology in advance and spends enough energy to make the class interesting, communication devices could work as supplementary tools to make the classroom experience more fruitful.