June 09, 2004

WHAT IS A BLOG?

A blog is a Web log -- any Website with dated entries, usually in text form. The blog's author usually keeps a sort of public journal, often accompanied by links he/she thinks might be of interest to readers or which illustrate some point of interest in the journal.

There's now a whole blog culture--communities of bloggers who link to one another's blogs. The format is better suited for a sort of newletter or diary than as a group discussion tool...but most blogs do include some sort of feedback mechanism, and Blogs do allow a free, interactive Web site for those who don't have one available in any other form.

So what are the potential uses of blogs in the online classroom...particularly if you already are using an LMS that includes many types of "publishing" features? Well, one way is certainly to have students maintain their own individual blogs for journal-type or portfolio-type assignments, since most LMS systems don't allow students to create and publish their own Web pages -- and to have students critique one another's blogs. Taken together, these can create a community space, where users comment on entries in one another's blogs.

Small groups could use this tool in a number of ways... A small group of students could collaborate in the blog to create a "newsletter" type of assignment. The blog serve as a sort of "feedback" space for short, informal comments on online resources -- for example, the instructor posts a resouce each day and has participants discuss whether they thought it was valuable. Groups of users in different locations could collaborate on a single blog, or each could maintain their own blog. The blog is available outside of a particular course offering, so it could be used to maintain contact or share resources after a course has ended.

These blogs don't really take the place of a threaded discussion or real-time chat area... As you look at this technology, think about what advantages or disadvantages blogs have as regards those types of resources and what other potential class uses blogs might have.

Posted by jotz at June 9, 2004 02:45 PM
Comments

Actually, there are a number of tools (many of them free, such as Blogger.com) that allow groups of users to create and maintain a Blog. The "Schoolblogs" link show some examples of how this can be used as an educational tool.

Posted by: Joanne at June 13, 2004 02:36 PM

Assuming the technology permits it, if the blog were password protected you could assign teams of students their own blogs. The blog would allow the team to collaborate without the other team seeing what they were up to. This might apply in a Web Site Design class where different teams were in a competition to design a site for a client.

Posted by: Chris Davis at June 12, 2004 10:10 AM

I'll be interested to see how much blog networks contribute as a "third way" of communication between discussion boards and email.

Posted by: George at June 11, 2004 09:59 AM