BLOGS

What is a Blog ?? A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly. According to Wikipedia a blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. To put it as simply as possible – a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Blogs in Education Blogs provide a communication space that teachers can utilise with students whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom. From an education perspective the availability and ease of use of blogging software makes creating blogs a viable classroom activity and a means for teachers to communicate with other teachers. Pedagogy & Blogging. B E N E F I T S Potential benefits as identified by learning specialists Fernette and Brock Eide’s and cited by Will Richardson in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Webtools for Classroooms. • Can Promote Critical and analytical thinking • Can Promote Creative, Intuitive and Associational thinking • Can Promote Analogical thinking • Potential for increased access and exposure to quality information • Combination of solitary and social interaction. U S E S Following is an extensive list of ideas of how to use blogs in the classroom, excerpted from Anne Davis’s EduBlog Insights. You might like to create a reflective, journal type blog to… • reflect on your teaching experiences.   • keep a log of teacher-training experiences. • write a description of a specific teaching unit. • describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn’t work. • provide some teaching tips for other teachers. • write about something you learned from another teacher. • explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes. • share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom. • provide some how-to’s on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class. • explore important teaching and learning issues.