Blog
From Elearning
A blog is an online place for public expression and comment. At its most basic, a blog is as a kind of public journal, where the blog user ("blogger") publicly records their thoughts or experiences. Today, blogs are used to record everything from political commentary to software development. Collaborative "group blogs" which have more than one blogger are also common.
Click to enlarge the image.
Bloggers make time-stamped contributions (or "posts") that are presented publicly in reverse chronological order (most recent first). Usually, these post can be commented on by readers of the blog.
Blog posts are usually:
- public,
- reverse chronologically-ordered, and
- individually submitted (though they can be anonymous).
Text-based posts are the norm, but posts can involve other media, e.g. static images or flash video files.
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Getting started with Blogs
Blog services on the WWW
Blogger and LiveJournal are two very popular web-based blogging services. Instructions on setting up a Blogger blog are available from our own blog, "Arts and the Social Web".
The University of Sydney has its own blogging service, called Blogs dot USYD.
Movable Type is the most popular form of blog for people who have their own host server.
Blogs on WebCT
WebCT CE6 has its own basic blog tool, which can be found under the "Discussions" heading on the course menu of any site.
To add the tool to your site, simply:
- Make sure you are in the Build tab
- Click "Add Content Link"
- Select "Discussions"
- Click "Create Discussion Topic"
- Select "Blog Topic", and click "Next"
- Choose a title for your blog
- Fill out the remainder of the form
- Note: contextual help is available from the Help link in the top right corner of the site)
- Note: Pay particular attention to the Topic Behavior Options, which determine
- a) whether students can post and/or comment on other's posts
- b) whether posts are displayed as anonymous to other students.
- Click "Save"
Advantages / Disadvantages
| Implementation | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| WebCT CE6 Blog |
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| Blogs dot USYD /
META Arts Blogs |
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| Google Blogger™ |
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| Livejournal™ |
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| Movable Type |
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Using Blogs in Education
Use of blogs by Australian academics
Adventures in blog land, an article in The Age (3 July 2006), looks at the emerging importance of blogging in academia both in building research profiles and allowing academic voices to be heard outside of the ivory towers of the university.
Educational possibilities
To understand the educational possibilities that blogs afford, it's worth keeping in mind that blogs have largely taken over from static web pages as the basic form of homepage on the web. Thus, blogs are regarded more as a place than as a service or facility. One doesn't so much use a blog as inhabit or visit one.
It can be helpful to think of blog use in terms of four sorts of places (which are often combined in any one blog):
- a home - in two senses:
- a) a place where others can visit to catch-up, and
- b) a safe space where one can develop ideas, reflect on emotions, etc.
- an office - a place where one promotes or develops one's professional identity
- a soapbox - a place where one shares one's opinion, and (often) exposes oneself to criticism by others (Thanks to Mary-Helen Ward for this metaphor.)
- a town hall - a place where public matters are discussed, ideas ventured and debate initiated.
These afford different educational opportunities. Here are some ideas of how blogs can be used in an educational context:
- as a reflective journal during a placement period, allowing class members to keep in touch with each other and share experiences. (home)
- to present the development of student projects or research, and receive feedback and/or advice from the lecturer and other students. (home/office/soapbox)
- as a topic-specific blog where a group of students contribute and comment on research findings to develop a share repository of knowledge (office)
- as the site of debate on a particular question, with students allocated to pro and con positions (town hall)
"Siblings" or similar tools
An individual, private blog (which threatens to be a contradiction in terms) is better known as a reflective journal.
Contributions to a discussion board are almost identical to blog posts. The difference between the two is that discussion boards attempt to represent the entire discussion, by organizing contributions into 'threads'. Thus, contributions are treated as speech acts within a conversation. By contrast, blogs tend to treat posts as independent of one another (though they can be interlinked after the fact). Blog posts are chronologically ordered, whereas discussion board posts have the form of a call and response. Note, however, that the "comments" section of a blog can be used like a discussion board thread, although comments themselves aren't threaded.
"Friends" or oft-combined tools
Blogs are often coupled with Web feeds, since these allow readers of a blog to keep up-to-date with the latest blog postings without actually visiting the blog itself.
Blogs also often use a form of social bookmarking or tags to associate related posts which would otherwise be hard to find chronologically.
Basic actions
The basic actions that can be facilitated by blogs include:
Analyzing, Commenting, Cooperating, Coordinating, Criticizing, Discussing, Participating, Referring, Reflecting, Sharing, Writing
Related patterns
See discussion page for a suggestion on how to present related patterns
One for all and all for one - Overcome the dilemma of having either group or individual blogs by getting students with individual blogs to subscribe to each other's web feeds
Risks / Abuses
One of the risks of using a blog in teaching is the focus on individual opinion. Students can end up posting "at cross purposes", i.e. largely ignoring each other's posts. This can be overcome by explicitly developing a community, through patterns such as those suggested by Gilly Salmon.
How it works (briefly)
A blog - like most web technologies - is simply a publicly-modifiable database. Entries are added to the database through a web interface, and the contents of this database are presented in the form of web-pages. Of course, every new database entry is time-stamped
Case-studies
- Blogging to develop a research focus (ARHT5908) - Dr Jennifer Milam, Dept of Art History and Theory
References / Comments
Darren Rowse, of ProBlogging.net, has written a comprehensive series of articles called Blogging for Beginners on how to get your blog up and running, and how to develop your blogging abilities. Here's a sample:
- What is a Blog?
- 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You?
- Choosing a Blog Platform
- Blog Tools
- Useful and Unique Content
- Post Length
- Granular (One Topic) Posts
- Using Titles Effectively on Blogs
- Scannable Content
- Basic HTML Tags
- More on Writing Content for your Blog
- An Introduction to Using Images on Blogs
- How to Start a Blog Partnership
Categories: Tools | Commenting | Discussing | Reflecting | Writing
