Blogging

Information about how blogging can be useful for students in learning

Share your experiences of blogging as part of your education - either as a student or as an educator.
> --Glogs look interesting! First I've heard of them actually. >
 * Comments: How about building a glog very design friendly! []
 * Yes we are getting a good reaction to glogging on the cyberpsychology101 wiki - great brainsorming tool even has virtual cue cards that you can drop references on and arrange!

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 * I have used blogging to present my work to peers and receive critical analysis of it. I find it very useful particularly where I am mid-project and having difficulties, or at a standstill. I find most critical feedback to be constructive and helpful, and frequently find the positive feedback to be very motivating.
 * As an educator, I decided to use a blog rather than a website to document the work our students were doing for a number of reasons: Blogs can have more of a 'live' feel to them - the day-to-day workings of our courses could be (should they prove to be interesting enough) posted for all to see to enable the viewer to get an idea of what the courses are like. Blogs are also far easier to update on an ongoing basis. Also, I thought a blog may encourage prospective students to engage more readily with the content as the format was something they would have already been used to dealing with i.e. Bebo, MySpace, Facebook etc. and just maybe wouldn't be as daunting in some respects as an official site could be. The strategy has paid off in a number of ways - students became cogniscent of the fact that their early college work could be published online and would be selected for inclusion if it was up to par, thereby encouraging students to perform well on each project and it would be published almost as a reward! The existence of the blog allows future employers to potentially see students in development from stage one through to stage four of their learning and would have an amount of knowledge on the students' abilities if they wanted to employ them. The blog also acts as a valuable archive of work for viewing by the current cohort of students in order to determine what's good, and also for potential students who can see what it is we ask our students to do on the courses. I have yet to use it as a tool for peer assessment - I think that should be student-led where possible, but could well feature on the next version of it when we decide to update what we are using now. We also started to feature the work of past graduates who operate locally, nationally and internationally to show our current students what life as a designer could be like in the real world should they choose to make the effort to succeed.
 * I have run a project where I required students to blog their progress on a project from start to finish. They had to post work in progress, discuss their ideas and where they were at, difficulties they were having. Many students found that this helped them by forcing them to elucidate their thinking and put it into words. It encouraged them to raise their standards throughout the process - as they knew that others would see each stage of the work. They also found feedback from other students on their blogs to be encouraging and helpful.
 * As part of a lecturing team we are currently looking at the use of blogs aligned with / linked to the main programme website. The aim of this is to give potential students a feel for the day to day activities that form and shape the learning experiences in the programme - a more productive insight rather than the generic descriptions in the Institutes prospectus. This should make it more attractive for potential students and inform their choice when choosing a programme of study. This is something the students currently in stream are interested in contributing to, we found their reaction and response to the initiative to be positive and constructive.
 * From my experience I am rather cautious about using the broad scope of the Internet, and more inclined to use specialised and focussed sources. Blogs conjure up the notion of opinion rather than well-formed arguments and constructive debates.

To let us know what is stopping you using this tool in education.

 * **//Comments: //**
 * In my experience - many educators are reluctant to engage with blogs and other kinds of media like them because they are afraid of losing control of the project and having it descend into chit chat.

===**To share any useful information, research, links or data you have about blogging in education.** === > **[|Sun, Y. (2009). Voice Blog: An Exploratory Study Of Language Learning.] ** > > **[|21stcenturycollaborative.com/] ** > []
 * //Comments: //
 * **Interesting look at voice blogs in Language study**
 * **Great varied education blog **
 * ===An interesting article about blogging in education:===