Blog

Definition

A blog or weblog (from the combination of the words web and log) is a web-based application where authors regularly write articles (posts or entries) in journal style. Entries are displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs usually include text, images, and links to other blogs, websites, and other media related to their topic.

Weblogs provide a format for critiques of other Web materials along with various personal touches. They are structured like journals, with their segments identified by time and date. . . . The weblog format allows developers (often known as "bloggers") to work either alone or in teams. It supports a wide range of personal expression and interaction as individuals access and comment on one another's weblogs.. . . Along with critiques of various articles and web sites, weblog development can also incorporate "day-in-the-life" narratives and other forms of personal information. (Jo An Oravec)

Types of blogs

• Typical single user blogs (see below)
• Embedded blogs in portals (e.g. in C3MS, LMS or CMS systems
• Collective blogs, e.g. news engines or the default module displayed in a C3MS

Blog structure

A blog generally comprises a number of different elements. In the main block posts are displayed in reverse chronological order. Each post includes a title, date, the author's name or nickname, a permalink to the article, i.e. the URL of the full article, and trackback (and/or number of trackbacks), i.e. links to other sites that refer to this entry. Posts often include links to related news articles, documents, or other blog entries.

TrackBack “is a mechanism for communication between blogs: if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.” ([1])

Bloggers can associate tags to each entry. Tags are key words which can be used to describe the content of a post; they are particularly useful for readers who can easily find posts of particular interest to them. It's always possible to edit previous entries. Readers can submit comments to each post. However, due to spamming problems, some bloggers disable or moderate comments.

In the sidebar, depending on the layout choosen, we can find several navigational links: to other blogs or wesites of interest (blogroll), to archived entires (both by date and tags), to the author's profile, to a search form, and to RSS or XML syndication feeds.

Blogging Etiquette

According to some bloggers, all blog users should follow some elementary rules of conduct. Most bloggers are not journalists and can't be expected to follow journalistic ethics codes. However, since posts are public and can be viewed by anyone, responsible bloggers should be asked to follow some basic guidelines.

Blog software and platforms

If you have a hosting, you can install a standalone plateform (we have dressed a small list of the most important Open Source blogging tools). You can also open a blog without any installation. You can find a lot of commercial solutions (Google is your friend).

Popular open source softwares

1. WordPress: based on PHP/MySQL is one of the best blog engines. The new version of WordPress integrates a small CMS
2. MU WordPress: based on WordPress this version enhance some functionalities. The administrators can create more blogs with one installation. WordPress permits to have only one blog at time
3. TextPattern: based on PHP/MySQL
4. DotClear: french blog engine
5. b2evolution: like MU WordPress
6. Nucleus: multi-blog-CMS like MU WordPress (PHP/MySQL)
7. Roller Weblogger: like MU WordPress but based on Java

Search engines

• Traditional search engines like Google web search rather do a bad job with blogs (since blogs are focused on what is new and not contents that are referred to by many sites over a very long times). Therefore rather use specialized services like:
• Technorati, see Wikipedia:Technorati
• Feedster, see Wikipedia:Feedster
• Goggle Blog Search

Educational Usages

Draft

• Technically speaking, there is a difference between using a blog among other tools within a design, or wether it is the "center stage" medium. DSchneider uses blogs in his own teaching just as little reflection tool within his C3MS project-based learning model.

• A blog can be given to individual students, to groups or to the class as a whole. Note: if students use multiple blogs, make sure to understand how the "blogsphere works" (i.e. learn about how blogs connect with RSS and trackback mechanisms, e.g. see the [Wikipedia article] for technical details.

Typical educational use includes, for example:

• as a note taking tool in classes
• to collect resources and ideas (with small comments and reflections). That is actually what most "academic" blogs do. E.g. a very fine "world class" example is Pasta & Vinegar.
• as note taking tools for (before/during/after) field trips, e.g. to write down questions, observations, reflections, etc. See inquiry learning
• as a (class or project) management tool (instead of a forum or any other writing tool).
• as a collaborative tool {{comment | this is too vague ..}
• as a news tool for a school or even a class
• as a website (instead of a CMS tool or HTML pages)
• as reflection tool
• as discussion tool (either via the comment tool or within a multi-blog setup with trackbacks)

ADVANTAGES OF USING BLOGS

Given that students have more and more access to Internet, using blogs has demonstrated to have many advantages:

• it can replace or ease traditional classroom teaching;
• it helps students explore and link themselves and what they are studying to the real world;
• it favours social interaction;
• it makes students more responsible;
• it improves writing skills;
• it helps students learn how to use new technologies;
• it increases students’participation;
• students can share their ideas, works, experiences.

When writing a blog students have the possibility to explore the real world and its sources. They come to know a different variety of instruments and tools they had never considered before and they learn how to use them. First steps are sometimes frustrating- this because of the lack of knowledge- but at the end this new knowledge becomes useful not only for classroom activities but also for everyday life. Usually students’apprehension about blogging decreases in a few weeks, as far as they learn to use the tools and increase their active praticipation. As pointed out by Jopnathan Benda “students lack background in the principles behind designing a Web site that really communicates something to an audience” (2001). Therefore using blog and its software ease bloggers use of it and increases motivation.

According to Susan McLeod weblogs are “ways to help students explore and assimilate new ideas, create links between the familiar and the unfamiliar, mull over possibilities and explain things to the self before explaining them to others”” (2001). If used within a class, blogs can be used by students to share their ideas, knowledge and thoughts. Writing online has a double advantage: first of all students can share materials –be it works, ideas, etc-; then they can learn through practice and repeated use of the same tools. If learning a language, the time spent in studying its rules and grammar may decrease by using and writing blogs.

Because of the benefits of social interaction, many teachers agree that making students use blogs is very important. By making their writing public students become more responsible with what they write and how they write it. Students write their work for a varied audience rather than just for their teachers. Bruffee declares that such a way “promoted student-writers’ abilities to se themselves as responsible writers and to view writing as a social activity” (2001).

One great advantages of blogs is that students can improve their linguistic skills, especially in writing and reading. Blogs, in fact, provide materials and language which is typical of everyday life, so that students can feel their learning process linked to the real world. Not only, if used by a whole classroom, blogs can be useful both for teachers and students. Blogs help students learn how to write and, especially if they are shy during face-to-face lessons, the lack of visive contact may have very positive results for them, in the sense that they may be stimulated to participate more to online-classroom activities.Thanks to her experience Linda Harasin suggests that “weblogs in our classrooms has been more effective for at least some of our students because it has increased participation: our quiter students who tipically don’t participate in face-to-face discussions are participating in weblog discussions” (1986). Teachers as well find advantages in making students use blogs. Anxiety can be found in students and teachers, too. If students are anxious about face-to-face activities, teachers as well are anxious because their role is not only to teach things but also to raise their students’ motivation. Using blogs can be a very useful tool teachers have to increase their sudents’ motivation and interest towards classroom materials and real life, too.

Teachers’ and students' approach to educational blogs

Teachers' approach

Nowadays teachers are introducing in the classroom new kinds of technologies. This fact involves an improvement in the means of learning but also a change in people's attitude when teaching or learning. Here I'm going to describe teachers’ attitude when they meet their students in blogs.

Blogs as means of teaching and learning can be a useful tool for both students and learners. Thanks to this technology they get in touch on line; this fact provides a way to communicate openly without meeting each other face to face. Education blogs create a new kind of classroom: there, students and teachers meet beyond the boundaries of the school yard and they can improve their skills through continuous communication between them ( Glencoe Online, 2006).

An English teacher, Will Richardson, (see Washington Post), has written a book on web tools for classrooms. In his book he says that in 2002 he created a blog for his students about his literature course. The result was that this fact stimulated conversation outside class and permitted him to understand his students’ real interest about the course. He concluded that blogs as teaching tools provided transparency in the contact between him and his students.

In a blog entitled “The question of teacher roles in Blogging –yet- traditional classrooms” , Barbara Ganley, explores a teacher’s best attitude to this technological tool. Her opinion might be summarized in at least seven rules, a teacher:

• Has to be a consultant, a guide.
• Shouldn't dominate the classroom.
• Has to participate on the blog alongside the students.
• Has to help students in working together.
• Has to be present to set climate and select content.
• Never has to use grades.
• Has to stay out of the center of the blog.

Students, in this way, can have the chance to explore and complete their e-tivities without anxiety for their final mark. However, the presence of the teacher is necessary to give them some feedback about the result of their work; then teachers stay alongside the blog, keeping on setting the tone and the mood but without imposing judgements or rules (Ganley, 2006).

Students’ approach

Nowadays blogging is being used more and more as a new learning technology and many studies, which have been carried out in the last few years on the use of this new learning tool, demonstrate that it can be very useful for students and their learning process.

This new technology can be very useful for students for several reasons:

• writing on blogs students can express and exchange their interests, opinions and thoughts feeling themselves free from the teacher’s judgment;
• they carry out their activities enjoying themselves and they don’t get bored as often happens with traditional activities taking place in the classroom;
• thanks to blogging students can reflect on course material in a public way that encourages feedback on the activity carried out.

When students write on blogs they don’t come face to face with each other; this thing can spur them on to communicate between each other, especially those students who never intervene in discussions taking place in the classroom because of their shyness or because they are afraid of making mistakes. After having carried out an activity students are supposed to provide feedback on the post of their schoolfriends. For example, in the context of language learning, they analyse it from the point of view of grammar, content and finally, they express their opinion. This response is very useful for students as it helps them to learn from each other, correct their mistakes and avoid repeating them in the future.

Eric Wiltse , a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wyoming, in his study “Blog, Blog, Blog: Experiences with web logs in journalism classes” describes his students’ impressions on their new experience: an online journalism class project on writing web logs or blogs. The general reaction of his students to this new project was positive. According to them:

• blogs are easier to create and change than journals they had written;
• blogging is a very new and creative way to communicate with other people in your class and to read other group members' comments on the blogs;
• the feedback given by other classmates is useful for improving the content of your personal blog;
• blogging is more amusing than traditional activities and it stimulates the students;
• thanks to the interection with other people which takes place on blogs people can enjoy themselves.

According to Wiltse:

   "blog assignments could be adopted for any class that involves a writing component. The  immediacy of 
    publishing one's writing and the possibility of a reader anywhere in the world commenting on that 
    writing make blogs powerful learning tools”(Wiltse).

Reading this study and based on my personal experience (I am using blogging in my English course) I can state that thanks to this learning tool students can really improve their writing skills; moreover, it is very useful for them because thanks to it they can really learn from each other.

Links

• Walker, J. Various entries in the "Blogs and teaching category" from jill/txt. HTML

• Blogging? It's Elementary, My Dear Watson!, Education world article.

• Selingo, Jeffrey (2004), In the Classroom, Web Logs Are the New Bulletin Boards, The New York Times, Aug 19, 2004. HTML

• Educational blogging as a research tool

• Creating Community, On-line and Off

• Bloggers Need Not Apply ....

• O Baoill, Andrew, Conceptualizing the Weblog: Understanding what it is in order to imagine what it can be, University of Illionois at Urbana-Champaign. PDF

• Glencoe Online (2006).Education Up close – Using blogs to integrate technology in the Classroom. Retrieved on December 13, 2006.

• Washington Post (2006). Teacher Makes Blogs A Staple at High School. Retrieved on December 13, 2006.

• Ganley, Barbara (2006). The Question of Teacher Roles in BLogging -yet- traditional Classrooms. Retrieved on December 13, 2006.

• Wiltse, E. (2004). Blog, Blog, Blog: Experiences with Web logs in journalism classes. Retrieved December, 13, 2006.

• Grah.(2003). Observations and comments on the use of weblogs, emerging technologies & e-learning tools for English Language Teaching. Retrieved December, 13, 2006.

References

• Baumgartner, P. & Kalz, M. (2004). Content Management Systeme aus bildungstechnologischer Sicht in Baumgartner, Peter; Häfele, Hartmut & Maier-Häfele, Kornelia: Content Management Systeme für e-Education. Auswahl, Potenziale und Einsatzmöglichkeiten, Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2004.

• Baumgartner, P., I. Bergner und L. Pullich (2004). Weblogs in Education - A Means for Organisational Change. In: Multimedia Applications in Education Conference (MApEC) Proceedings 2004. L. Zimmermann. Graz: 155-166. PDF

• Baumgartner, P. (2004). The Zen Art of Teaching - Communication and Interactions in eEducation. Proceedings of the International Workshop ICL2004, Villach / Austria 29 September-1 October 2004, Villach, Kassel University Press. CD-ROM, ISBN: 3-89958-089-3. PDF

• Downes, Stephen, Educational Blogging, DUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004): 14-26. HTML (also as PDF)

• Farmer, J. (2004). Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 274-283). Perth, 5-8 December. HTML - PDF

• Fiedler, S. (2003). Personal webpublishing as a refective conversational tool for self-organized learning. In T. D. Burg, BlogTalks. (pp. 190-216). Vienna, Austria. PDF

• Ganely, Barbara, Blogging as a Dynamic, Transformative Medium in an American Liberal Arts Classroom, WORD

• Kevin Brooks, Cindy Nichols, and Sybil Priebe (2004) Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs, Into the Blogosphere, HTML

• Godwin-Jones, Bob (2003) Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration, Language Learning & Technology, Vol. 7, No. 2, May 2003, pp. 12-16. (pdf) (html)

• Laurie Mcneill (2003). Teaching an Old Genre New Tricks: The Diary on the Internet, Biography, Volume: 26. Issue: 1.

• Oravec, Jo Ann, (2002), Bookmarking the World: Weblog Applications in Education - Weblogs Can Be Used in Classrooms to Enhance Literacy and Critical Thinking SkillsJournal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, v45 n7 p616-21 Apr 2002

• Oravec, Jo Ann (2003) Blending by Blogging: weblogs in blended learning initiatives, Journal of Educational Media, Volume 28, Numbers 2-3 / October 2003, 225 - 233

• Oravec, J. (2003). Weblogs as an emerging genre in higher education, Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 14(2), 21-44.

• Oravec, Jo ann (????). the "Transparent" Knowledge Worker and Locational Privacy. PDF (deals with KM-related issues).

• Philleo, Thomas & Gary M. Stiler (2003), Blogging and Blogspots: An Alternative Format for Encouraging Reflective Practice among Preservice Teachers. Education. Volume: 123. Issue: 4.

• Glencoe Online (2006). Education Up close – Using blogs to integrate technology in the Classroom. Retrieved on December 13, 2006, from

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/4

• Washington Post (2006). N.J. Teacher Makes Blogs A Staple at High School. Retrieved on December 13, 2006, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301350.html

• Ganley, Barbara (2006). bgblogging, The Question of Teacher Roles in Blogging -yet- Traditional Classrooms. Retrieved on December 13, 2006, from http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging/2006/06/the_question_of_teacher_roles_1.html

• Wiltse, E. (2004). Blog, Blog, Blog: Experiences with Web logs in journalism classes. Retrieved Dicember 13, 2006, from http://banners.noticiasdot.com/termometro/boletines/docs/marcom/comunicacion/utexas/2004/utexas_blogs.pdf

• Graham. (2003). In BLOG-ELF,Observations and comments on the use of weblogs, emerging technologies & e-learning tools for English Language Teaching. Retrieved Dicember 13, 2006, from

http://blog-efl.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_blog-efl_archive.html