Eddie Dunn’s Weblog

A Weblog or “blog” is a website consisting of many articles usually listed in reverse chronological order. These articles are most commonly textual in content but can also include images, sound, and even video. There are many Weblog products, some of them are free and others require payment for use. We are going to highlight WordPress, one of the more popular free products.

Getting started is quite simple. All one needs to do is have a working email address and click on the following link:

WordPress Signup


Once the form is completed and submitted you will need to activate the account. This is done by checking your email and clicking the special activation link contained in an email from WordPress. Now you are ready to start blogging!


WordPress Lessons


Options for instructors using blogs:

• Content-related blog as professional practice
• Networking and personal knowledge sharing
• Instructional tips for students
• Course announcements and readings
• Annotated links
• Knowledge management

Options for students using blogs in your courses include:

• Reflective or writing journals
• Knowledge management
• Assignment submission and review
• Dialogue for groupwork
• E-portfolios
• Share course-related resources

“Henry Farrell identifies five major uses for blogs in education:

1. Teachers use blogs to replace the standard class Web page. Instructors post class times and rules, assignment notifications, suggested readings, and exercises. Aside from the ordering of material by date, students would find nothing unusual in this use of the blog. The instructor, however, finds that the use of blogging software makes this previously odious chore much simpler.

2. Instructors begin to link to Internet items that relate to their course. Mesa Community College’s Rick Effland, for example, maintains a blog to pass along links and comments about topics in archaeology.15 Though Mesa’s archaeology Web pages have been around since 1995, blogging allows Effland to write what are in essence short essays directed specifically toward his students. Effland’s entries are not mere annotations of interesting links. They effectively model his approach and interest in archaeology for his students.

3. Blogs are used to organize in-class discussions. At the State University of New York at Buffalo, for example, Alexander Halavais added a blog to his media law class of about 180 students. Course credit was awarded for online discussion, with topics ranging from the First Amendment to libel to Irish law reform. As the course wound down with a discussion of nude bikers, Halavais questioned whether he would continue the blog the following year because of the workload, but students were enthusiastic in their comments

Mireille Guay, an instructor at St-Joseph, notes: “The conversation possible on the weblog is also an amazing tool to develop our community of learners. The students get to know each other better by visiting and reading blogs from other students. They discover, in a non-threatening way, their similarities and differences. The student who usually talks very loud in the classroom and the student who is very timid have the same writing space to voice their opinion. It puts students in a situation of equity.”

4. Some instructors are using blogs to organize class seminars and to provide summaries of readings. Used in this way, the blogs become “group blogs”—that is, individual blogs authored by a group of people. Farrell notes: “It becomes much easier for the professor and students to access the readings for a particular week—and if you make sure that people are organized about how they do it, the summaries will effectively file themselves.”

5. Students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course grade. Educational Technologist Lane Dunlop wrote about one class at Cornell College: “Each day the students read a chunk of a book and post two paragraphs of their thoughts on the reading.” In another class, French 304, students were given a similar exercise. Using a French-language blogging service called Monblogue, Molly, a business student, posted a few paragraphs every day.”


references:

http://www.pembinatrails.ca/program/technology/uses_of_blogs_in_education.htm

http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/