Blogs
Reviewed: February 2008
This page has been kept for reference.
It will no longer be updated by ICVET.
Blogging is a form of internet personal publishing using online tools easily accessible to those with less technical skills. Blogs are little snippets of text about what ever you like, and audio (podcasting), video (videocasting)… that can be made available to the world or a select group of students through the Internet. Blogs are often conversational in tone.
Three styles of Blogging useful in education are:
Personal - An online diary of the world according to you or your students.
Knowledge management - A convenient way of delivering structure content quickly
Communal/social - A communication tool to support a learning community converse and develop ideas about any subject.
A blog is a living breathing thing. Upon reviewing this page I noticed the first three entries (on the history of blogs) were last updated in 2001!! Currency, relevance and interest keep a blog alive, this can be hard work.
What’s so great about blogs is they’re your or your student’s space. The joke is there are A LOT out there and your mother may be the only one reading!
There are four hurdles to pass to move from willing volunteer to competent blogger: learning the technology environment, developing an initial view of blogging, plugging into the conversation, and developing a voice. These are not so much discrete phases as they are parallel tracks that can be managed.
One way t o begin blogging is to go to Google's Blogger and reading other people's blogs.
Websites
The following links will lead you to definitions, examples
and ‘blogging’ tools.
Blogging for education (and all other things)
This site is excellent! Go here to find out about blogging for: Business, Community, Education, A Cause, Money. Take your pick. This site is rich in tips and information with a very active community passionate about the potential of blogging.
Class Blogmeister
There are many freely available tools that facilitate blogging, but none seem especially suited for the classroom. That is the reason for BlogMeister. This online blogging tool is explicitly designed with teachers and students in mind, where the teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students' blog articles in a controlled environment.
Userland Software (What are webblogs, podcasting and RSS feeds?)
This is a subsite of the Userland Software site which discusses the nature of blogs as well as RSS feeds and podcasting. Follow the link back to the Home page for information about the various applications of their blogging software.
Blogger
‘What is Blogger? Blogger is a free, web-based tool that helps you publish to the web (and mobile!) instantly - whenever the urge strikes. I have decided to use www.blogger.com, quite simply because it is very popular and owned by everybody’s favourite search engine www.google.com. Makes sense to me.
Moveable type
Moveable type is another popular piece of blogging software. Check out this interesting blog on the history of the company and the emergent explosion of the blogging community in general.
Teaching and Learning Online (TALO)
This personal blog is edited by Leigh Blackall, and is an excellent example of a blog with a mixture of the three blogging styles, personal, information management and communal. There are heaps of useful technical and educational tips and information with a distinct conversational tone. Check it out.
Better blog writing
If you’re thinking about starting your own blog consider your writing style. This site has an excellent article on keeping your blog interesting.
Content aggregation (RSS)
There is no doubt the amount of blogging content on the internet is overwhelming. How to you filter out the content you are really interested in and bring it all together in one place? The above website tells you how to manage your text content using RSS feeds.
Podcasting (Audio blogging)
I love the term ‘podcasting’, very futuristic, what does it mean? The technology is a new take on publishing text content using RSS. Instead of pushing text from blogs to RSS content aggregators like ‘bloglines’, podcasting sends audio content directly to a MP3 player using RSS feeds. Educationally it’s a great way for distributing lectures.
Blogs – Learn to blog, blog to learn
This article by Jay Cross contains descriptions of blogs and the ways in which blogs can support learning. He also includes links to several sample blogs.
Cog dog blog
site which is powered by Wordpress blogging software. Well worth a look, for its educational content, as well as being an exemplar of social networking.
See also
Guidelines for using Blogs & Wikis PROJECT UPDATE | eZine February 2007
Being there ... in the unevenly distributed future - Alan Levine, CogDog REPORT | eZine December 2007
