Blogs in HE

A blog is, in essence, an online journal.

Implicit in the structure of a blog is an ownership model whereby a primary author creates content (e.g. expresses an opinion) which is then commented upon by others. Interaction takes the form of commentary produced by the online audience relating to primary content.

Here's a summary of the main features of a blog:

• individual dated entries comprised of text and images, hyperlinks to external websites and other media;
• reverse chronological arrangement of entries that places the most recent entry at the top of the page;
• easy-to-use interface that allows users to upload and edit entries through their web browser;
• secondary content made possible through a comments box after each entry allowing others to respond to primary content;
• search function;
• ability to 'tag' blog posts;
• automatic archiving of entries according to month and year;

Finally, some useful articles:

Bristow, R. (2005). Beyond email: wikis, blogs and other strange beasts. Ariadne, 42 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue42/beyond-email-rpt/intro.html

Dickey, M. D. (2004) The impact of web-logs (blogs) on student perceptions of isolation and alienation in a web-based distance-learning environment. Open Learning, 19(3) 279-292

Nückles, M. et al. (2004). The use of public learning diaries in blended learning. Journal of Educational Media, 29 (1), 49-66

Weller, M. et al. (2005).Use of innovative technologies on an e-learning course. Internet and Higher Education, 8, 61–71

Williams, J. B. and Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2), 232-247. http://www.jeremybwilliams.net/AJETpaper.pdf

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking refers to the practice of storing your favourite web sites online using web-based services such as del.icio.us, Furl or BibSonomy.

The social dimension of this practice comes from making your bookmarked web sites public, allowing you to share them with friends, family and, of course, colleagues and students.

del.icio.us is perhaps the best-known social bookmarking site and the one we’ve recommend. First, you’ll need to create an account. This takes a few seconds and just requires you to choose a username and password. Once, created, you’ll then need to install two buttons on web browser. One button is a short cut to your del.icio.us web page; the other is a tag button allowing you to bookmark the web sites you are viewing and add keywords and comments. Any sites you bookmark are added to your personal del.icio.us page.

By using a social bookmarking site, your bookmarks are no longer tied to a particular computer. Wherever you have web access, you have access to your bookmarks.

When you bookmark a site, you are asked to assign it a tag or keyword. This helps organise your bookmarks and allows you, should you wish, to share your bookmarks more selectively by linking to your page of favourite sites with a particular tag, as in the example below:

http://del.icio.us/Anthony_McNeill/Social_Bookmarking

Adding a web site to your favourites will allow you to view how many other people have bookmarked it as well as the other sites they have added to their favourites. It’s also possible exploit the ‘wisdom of crowds’ by searching for web sites by tag and then bookmarking other users’ bookmarks.

Social bookmarking isn’t just about you sharing web sites with your students. It’s easy for students to create their own individual or joint accounts and creating their own set of tagged and annotated web pages.

Cousin on the VLE

Here are some interesting extracts from Glynis Cousin's chapter relevant to our discussion of VLEs:

.. unless [...] experimentation is encouraged, VLE environments tend to be skewed towards the simulation of the classroom, lecture hall, tutor's office and the student common room. […]Another clue to the resonance VLEs establish with the old world can be found in their brand names or symbols: Blackboard and First Class are two obvious ones and in the case of the WebCT logo we have the image of a little white, male professor complete with mortar board and gown, clutching the sturdy medium of paper. (Cousin: 2005 p.121)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mob_Quad_from_Chapel_Tower.jpg
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Though the online medium can allow forays into unchartered territory, there is a level at which the VLE pulls up the drawbridge, enclosing the student and tutor within a familiar university building. [...] … the identities encouraged by VLEs derive from a protectionist view of the university as the centre and controller of knowledge production. (Cousin: 2005 pp.122-123)

... it may be best to regard VLEs as transitional objects, enabling academics to work with the new and the old simultaneously. (Cousin 2005: 127-8)

... the declining use of any media which have played a part in our identity formation is understandably experienced as loss. For some this loss prompts a luddite yearning for the apparent safety of the past. p.120

References

Cousin, G. (2005) 'Learning from cyberspace' in Land, R. and Bayne, S. (eds) Education in cyberspace. London: RoutledgeFalmer. pp. 117-129

Social Networking

There are a number of very popular social networking sites (SNS) now which allow users to connect and interact with others using a range of tools including instant messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogs, wikis, discussion boards and ‘wall’ spaces.

The most popular social networking environments are currently Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

For a short video introduction to social networking, take a look at the video below:

If you’d like some further reading then try:

boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

Selwyn, N. (2007). Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook! an investigation of students' educational use of Facebook. Paper presented to Poke 1.0 – Facebook social research symposium, November. http://www.scribd.com/doc/513958/Facebook-seminar-paper-Selwyn

Silly stuff

As promised, here's the Facebook for silver surfers spoof I mentionned last night:

Click on image to access web page

You might also enjoy this video too. Not sure what it is - authentic or spoof? - but it's a nice warning to those who predict technology-driven utopias (and dystopias) for learning:

1999 A.D. Learning
Uploaded by donaldtheduckie

Enjoy!

Mobile Internet

Today's Blogging Workshop

Here's my presentation for today's workshop on blogging:

| View | Upload your own

Eduspaces is an HE-oriented social networkign site with a useful blog (e.g. mine).

Articles on blogging

Got a package of course info for MSc in e-learning today (quite exciting being a student again).

Thought I'd do a bit of reading on the blogging side of things (even though I think I'm fairly up to speed on this).

Here's some of the preliminary reading:

McClellan, J. (2004) 'Inside the ivory tower'. The Guardian. September 23, 2004. Retrieved, August 29 2007, from: http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/comment/0,,1311177,00.html

The article starts small: a postgrad using a blog to record ongoing research, reflections, resources etc. before moving out to a bigger picture of blog uses in HE: individual and group blogs for sharing ideas with a wider community, or as a course noticeboard.

A couple of particular strengths stick out:

1. the blog as a form that encourages peer review and obliges authors to refine ideas (Esther MacCallum-Stewart calls the blog a "mind gym")
   
   
2. the blog as a form that breaks down the boundaries of HE to engage with a greatly expanded readership.

The article ends on a warning note that HEIs are increasingly locking down content behind password-protected systems. My view is that this may be so but nothing prevents academics setting up their own externally hosted blogs on third-party sites.

Siemens, G. (2002) The Art of Blogging - Part 1: Overview, Definitions, Uses, and Implications.
Retrieved, August 29 2007, from:
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/blogging_part_1.htm
A very early article, predating the Web 2.0 hype. A useful collection of definitions of blogging from the pioneers. The Andrew Sullivan line that blogging is somewhere "between writing a column and talk radio" captures nicely the blog's dual structure of primary and secondary content. The focus isn't really on HE and the game has moved on a little since 2002.


One link doesn't work (http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/matrix.gif

What is Web 2.0 workshop

My PowerPoint presentation for the What is Web 2.0 and what can it do for me? workshop uploaded to SlideShare, and converted to a Flash file and embedded in this blog post for demo purposes:

Pedagogic PowerPoint 2

I've been looking at some of the recommended reading for an MSC I've just enrolled on.

One of the books, Brabazon, T. (2002) Digital hemlock: internet education and the poisoning of teaching, looks like a provocative read (i.e. something to disagree with).

I found another article by the author on the ipodification of space (iPod consistently written as i-Pod!) with a truly toe-curling opening paragraph which doesn't bode well:

Our popular cultural clocks stop at the point of our greatest immersion, passion and excess. For me, 1987 was the musical zenith. I never quite recovered from acid house, chalk-stiff styling mousse, black eyeliner and pixie boots. I remember Rick Astley with fondness ...

Enough already!

I've reluctantly ordered a copy but a review I came across would seem to indicate that the book articulates some familiar (remember David Noble's Digital Diploma Mills?) criticisms of technology. PowerPoint is one tool that comes in for a particular bashing.

However, it looks like another case of an author citing the poorest possible uses of technology in order to discredit its use (it's Edward Tufte again) just like some awful old right-winger citing Stalin in order to dismiss communism.

I wouldn't defend for a second a tedious lecture supported by PowerPoint, but "mental absenteeism" in the lecture theatre (see pic below) and students bunking off lectures existed well before that Microsoft product so many love to hate.


I'm with Kinchin on PowerPoint:

…what PowerPoint is actually doing is to make explicit the taken-for-granted assumptions and implicit epistemological leanings of lecturers who are using it. The stereotypic teacher-centred, noninteractive mode of lecturing … is simply clarified and amplified by the use of PowerPoint. (Kinchin, 2006 p.647 - see my PP presentation for full reference)