Blogging in Online Education: Opportunities and Challenges

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Blogging in Online Education Opportunities and
Challenges

• Presentation for ADETA
• January 27, 2005
• Scott Leslie

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Outline

• What Blogging Is
• What Blogging Isnt
• Matrix of Blogging in Education
• Examples
• Cautions
• Discussion?

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Quick Survey

• How many of you have heard of blogs/blogging
  before?
• regularly read a blog?
• write a blog?
• use one in your online classes?
• use an RSS Reader/Aggregator?

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Blogs vs. Blogging

• Blogs as a thing a personal, chronologically
  ordered set of entries, each having a title,
  description and unique URL, in a web-based log
  or journal.
• VS.
• Blogging as an activity - both a use of
  technologies, but more importantly, a form of
  writing AND reading on the network

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So why all the fuss?
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Blogs represent

• first simple personal web-based publishing tools
  to be widely adopted
• first set of tools supporting simple creation of
  XML-based content (e.g. content separate from its
  presentation which can be displayed many places)
• creation of a set of practices and conventions
  around a new form of social network writing
  that includes both the reading and writing

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simple personal publishing tools

• First blogs (c. 1997) were HTML pages generated
  with whatever webpage editor that was at hand
• Emerged as a force with the advent of a number of
  web-based services and applications
• Blogger, LiveJournal, MoveableType
• Their explosion in late 2002/early 2003 coincided
  (and partly brought on) a groundswell of interest
  in social software and services focused on
  individuals located within a network

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(No Transcript)
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simple creation of XML content

• While you can read blogs with a web browser, many
  people do not access them this way
• Instead they have the highlights of many blogs
  pushed to them in the form of RSS (Really Simple
  Syndication) an XML format for synopsizing latest
  changes to a website

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RSS Continued

• Reading RSS feeds in an aggregator or feed
  reader means that instead of having to visit
  every website each day to see what has changed,
  you can visit one place and see only what has
  changed since you last visited for all the blogs
  you read at once!
• This efficiency means people can monitor hundreds
  of sources regularly without becoming overwhelmed

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Examples of Blogging Software Outputs
HTML/Blog
RSS/XML
Other Locations
?


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blogging practices and conventions

• Blogrolls and references in posts as means to
  creating connections and virtual conversations,
  acknowledging who you read
• Trackbacks automated means for notifying
  another blog when you have referenced them
• As web pages representing people blogs are
  googleable
• Advent of sites like Technorati, Feedster have
  helped increase ones sense of place within
  larger conversational space

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What Blogging Isnt

• While a virtual space of conversation emerges
  from the collection of blogs, blogging is NOT a
  replacement for threaded discussion or mailing
  lists
• They represent an improved means to establish
  personal voice and identity on the network, but
  a diminished means of having a focused back and
  forth discussion

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What Blogging Isnt (2)

• Blogs/Blogging are not a replacement for CMS
• The purposely lack things lack assessment tools
  and user tracking
• They represent instead one lightweight tool that,
  alongside a myriad other lightweight tools, could
  provide an attractive alternative to
  heavyweight/ bundled CMS

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Matrix of Blog Uses in Education

• Originally developed for a BC-wide online
  workshop on the uses of blogging in education
• Looked at blogs from the perspective of both
  reading/aggregating them and writing them
• Also from the perspective of Student as
  author/audience and Instructor as author/audience

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STUDENTS
INSTRUCTORS
AS READER
AS READER
INTERNET-WIDE FOCUS
CLASSROOM FOCUS
PERSONAL FOCUS
AS AUTHOR
AS AUTHOR
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Instructors as Blog Authors

• Personal focus
• Personal Journal/KM Tool
• Classroom focus
• Announcements blog
• Instructional Tips for Students
• Annotated Links for Class
• Internet-wide focus
• Discipline-specific blog as professional
  practice, networking, online publishing

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Instructors as Blog Readers

• Personal Focus
• Personal Journal/KM Tool
• Classroom Focus
• Students blogs as part of coursework
• Institutional blogs/RSS feeds
• Internet-wide Focus
• Ed tech/pedagogical blogs as part of professional
  practice
• Discipline-specific Blogs to keep abreast of
  field
• RSS Feeds from LORs to gather new teaching
  materials

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Students as Blog Authors

• Personal Focus
• Personal Journal / Knowledge Management Tool
• Classroom Focus
• Course-based Journals for Assessment
• As a group discussion tool
• Internet-wide Focus
• As a eportfolio tool for both institution-wide
  and internet-wide publication

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Students as Blog Readers

• Personal Focus
• Own Journal/KM Tool
• Classroom Focus
• Instructors Announcements or Content Blog
• Other Students blogs (both course and non-course
  uses)
• Internet-wide Focus
• Discipline-specific feeds as coursework

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Instructor Blogs Examples

• Annotated Links blog
• Bruce Landons Cognitive Psychology links
  bloghttp//radio.weblogs.com/0101747/categories/c
  ognitivePsychology/
• Administrative Announcements blog
• Jim Sentences Economics 102C. 203 and 312/462
  Announcements http//weblogs.upei.ca/blog/124

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Instructor Blogs Examples

• As Discipline-Specific Professional Practice
• UBC Botanical Gardens Botany Blog
• http//www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/weblog/
• EconLog
• http//econlog.econlib.org/
• Elearnspace
• http//www.elearnspace.org/blog/
• Professors who blog list
• http//rhetorica.net/professors_who_blog.htm

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Instructor Blog Examples

• As full course delivery mechanism
• David Wileys Understanding Online
  Interactionhttp//wiley.ed.usu.edu/courses/intera
  ction-2004/
• see also students blogscf. http//mozson.blogspo
  t.com/

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Student Blog Examples

• Blogs as Personal Journal and Student-to-Student
  Communication Space
• Random Thoughts by Joe
• http//blog.lib.umn.edu/piep0058/loverboy/
• cf. his list of other journals he reads to see
  the informal student network he participates in
• Michaels Economics Blog
• http//foranewliberty.com/econ/

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Student Blog Examples

• as ePortfolio
• http//careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/mitch/

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Institution-wide Blogging Examples

• Weblogs_at_UBC
• http//careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/home/
• UPEI
• http//weblogs.upei.ca/
• U Minnesota Libraries
• http//blog.lib.umn.edu/
• University of Warwick
• http//blogs.warwick.ac.uk/

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Cautions

• While there has been plenty of hype, there are
  still few great examples of the use of blogs in
  online education
• May well be that, as they are very much involved
  with writing, they may well lend themselves
  better to certain disciplines then others

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Cautions (2)

• Blogs in their pure form represent a challenge
  to the closed model of the online classroom
• This can be addressed by choosing to implement
  blog hosting software on campus that provides an
  authenticated environment
• Downside of loosing the serendipitous connections
  with others that blogs in the open promote
  continues the quarantining of ones online
  educational life from ones life online

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Cautions (3)

• Easy to confuse the technological manifestations
  with the important lessons they are revealing
• The true power of blogs have been
• to liberate personal publishing,
• to enable indvidual voice but
• to do so in a networked environment in which the
  conversation emerges organically rather than
  being confined by a pre-existing virtual space
• to bring together ones personal, professional
  and classroom work around a single set of
  technologies

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Discussion

• Questions?
• Potential topics for discussion
• What do you think the major hurdle to using blogs
  in your online practice is?
• How would you get started?
• What other uses for blogs can you imagine?

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Thanks!

• Feel free to contact me with questions
  atleslies_at_island.net
• or at my home on the web EdTechPost
• http//www.edtechpost.ca/mt/