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How can these blogs be used in education?
Among the really exciting aspects of blogging are the potential to apply
this technology in a number of ways to facilitate learning and to disseminate
information to a learning community online. Educators at all levels are experimenting
with this simple method chronological posting to enable faculty and students
to share information among themselves and the broader community.
I publish the three different blogs daily: Educational Technology, Techno-News,
and Online Learning Update. Each blog consists of brief summaries of current
news and research items relating to an aspect of educational technology and
links to the full text of the articles. Over time I have established an online
community that regularly consults these blog as a timely aggregation of current
news in the field. Hundreds of persons around the world visit the three blogs
each day.
Using an online utility, Site Meter, I am able to track the location of
those visiting the blogs by referring URL, ISP, time zone and other characteristics.
[Sample “snapshot” of locations of 100 previous visitors to
Online Learning Update]
The worldwide reach of blogs becomes readily apparent when using site-monitoring
technologies.
I have integrated my blogs into an online undergraduate seminar in Emerging
Internet and Computer Technologies. Students in the class visit the blogs
each week and choose one of the sixty articles I have posted for review.
The reviews are posted in a discussion board within a course management system
(Blackboard in this case). We then conduct continuing discussions on the
postings.
Other models for using blogs in classes include the public posting of student
journals or creative writing in individual student blogs. In these cases,
public comments are enabled through one of the many such “bolt-on” services
for blogs. I use the squawkbox.tv comment system to enable comments to be
posted in the Educational Technology blog http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/blogger.html .
Students from the class can conduct discussions online through the comment
function, and others can join in the discussion from the larger Web community.
Introduction
How are blogs made?
How can these blogs be used in education?
What does the future hold for blogs?
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