teachtools

Blogs

Page history last edited by Robin Heyden 1 yr ago

Blogs

What is a blog?

The term web-log, or blog, refers to a simple web page consisting of brief paragraphs of inopion, informaiton, personal journal entries, or links, called posts, that are arranged chronologically with the most recent first. Most blogs allw visiotrs to add a comment below a blog entry. The posting and commenting forms a sort of conversation betwen a primary author and a group of comment contributors.

There is an immediacy to a blog - most blogs are added to on a daily basis. Each post is "tagged" with a keyword or two, allowing the subject of the post to be categorized and then, later, searched and retrieved. Clicking on a post's tag will take you to a list of other posts by the same author filed under that same tag.

Linking is also an important part of blogging. Links sprinkled throughout a post deepen the context and help to facilitate retrieval and referencing to other sites or blogs.

Other terms you might encounter: A trackback allows blogger X to notify another blogger (Y) that they have referenced or commented on one of Y's posts. A blogroll is a list of links to other blogs that a particular blogger likes or finds useful. You can think of it as a favorites list. The blogosphere refers to the whole world of bloggers operating out there.

Join the Blogosphere

Now might be a good time to start a blog of your own. It’s a great way to post materials and resources, host online discussions, communicate with parents, or eliminate your paper newsletter. But we think one of the most interesting educational uses of a blog is to get students blogging.

There are lots of good stories out there about classroom blogs. A favorite is Darren Kuroptawa’s story. Darren is an AP Calculus teacher in Winnipeg and he started using blogs with his students as a way of summarizing what happens in class. In the fall, he’d assign one student on the first day, to take notes and post a blog entry that evening. The student was asked to summarize the class and then select a new “note taker” for the next day (in this way the chain continued and Darren didn’t have to assign it). At first students started simply – they wrote up short descriptions of class events without much oomph. But they quickly moved onto more complete descriptions, discussions, and started to outline their points of confusion. Other students chimed in with comments, suggestions, and questions. Then his students asked him if they could add pictures to their blog and links to other web sites that they’d found. Add to it? Heck, yes. Pretty soon they asked him for extra problem sets to put on the site and before long, they put up a chat box (a way for subscribers to add real-time commentary). The student blog entries got longer; more students were using the site to study, to talk to each other, and to talk with him. Darren reports that his students were frequently online at 11:00 or 12:00 at night – doing calculus! The classroom blog had taken on a life of its own. Darren now says that he couldn’t imagine teaching without a blog.

You can think of it as a way to give voice to what and how your students are learning. What’s more, you’re doing this by using a tool that is comfortable and familiar to them – meeting them on their turf. Here’s a link to Darren’s 2006-2007 academic year AP Calculus blog. And here is a link to Darren’s tutorial site (for teachers) giving very useful advice about starting a blog.

OK, now for some mechanics. What is a blog exactly? The word “blog” is shorthand for the phrase “web log”. It’s basically a web site where entries are displayed in reverse chronological order (most recent first). One person starts a blog (is the administrator of it), then others chime in and comment on the blog entries. Keep in mind that “blog” is a noun as well as a verb. “To blog’ is to edit or add to one’s web log.

According to Technorati (a blog search engine), as of December 2007, there are over 112 million blogs out there in the “blogosphere”. Blogs can contain text, images, links, and other media (e.g. video or Flash files) related to the entries.

Build Your Blog

So where do you start? There are a number of blog hosting services out there. For example, Blogspot (Darren’s choice) is one; I prefer Word Press because it gives you more control over the look of your blog. There are also edublogging platforms – that is hosting sites that provide blogging space specifically for classroom use – such as Class Blogmeister and EduBlog (www.edublog.org). Any of these will work just fine and they are all free. If you’re one who likes to compare, here is a blog software comparison chart provided by the Annenberg Center for Communication.

With any of these options, you just go to the site, sign up, and you will be given a url for your blog. Most of the blogging sites offer free tutorials and you can learn a lot quickly by just experimenting.

Here’s a useful article from PC Magazine, which describes blogging fundamentals and provides a labeled view of the components on a typical blog page.

Other Blogging Tools

CoveritLive

Live, interactive blogging. Interesting idea, eh?

CoveritLive is a free live-blogging tool could take blogs to a different level. To test it out, you just go to their site, register (no downloads necessary), then copy the embedded code they give you into your blog and you're ready to roll (there's a nice demo movie on their site to walk you through it). You, as the writer, are given a "Writer's Console" (pictured here) that looks different to what your participants see. The console is your hub. Using this you can post entries, questions, add polls, audio and video files. The console also displays the readers' comments on the right side.

I can see this turning blogging into a much more immediate and active experience. Imagine teachers setting up a "live blog time" (almost like office hours) when students could get online, post questions, discuss, and work through problems. It would also be great for covering a live event (a conference, a field trip, or a lab as it was unfolding).

When your live blog is finished, the window converts itself into an "Instant Replay" window. So readers can view/read the live blog later, if they missed the live session.

Cautionary note: this works best with Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

SharedBook

Here’s an idea – what do you do with your blog when the academic year has ended and your students move onto another class? You can capture the contents of your blog with something called SharedBook. This is a free widget that you add to your blog. It captures the blog’s contents (photos and all) so that you can, later, have it professionally printed into a physical book.