Web 2.0: What about blogs?

Blogs can be divided into the same three varieties as podcasts: faculty written, student written, and outside source. Both faculty written blogs and outside sources fed into a class via RSS feed can add a great deal to a class.

A faculty generated blog written specifically for learners can let your learners know that their instructor is still interested in and maybe even passionate about their field. And if the instructor is passionate about the field maybe the learner should be also.

A faculty blog also allows the faculty to take note of current events as they happen and comment on them relative the the course content. Then, when the class reaches the section of the course material that is relevant to the comment posted a month ago it's there to direct learners to.

Blogs written by other practitioners in the field bring their own strengths. In the past many disciplines didn't have much informal writing available to learners. Thanks to blogs there are many thousands of prominent individuals commenting more or less daily on various aspects of discipline knowledge. Many of these individuals are writing in an accessible style very different from formal, peer-reviewed journals and learners who would never consider reading a journal may find blogs fascinating and interesting.

Some blogs not only add currency to a course, they also may add what is essentially a lecture on a specific topic that is not covered well in the course textbook or perhaps adds a different (and important) perspective. Learner generated blogs bring another perspective also and can add to the writers' understanding of the course content.

Many of the learning management systems used today include a blogging tool. Those that do not have a specific blogging tool probably include a threaded discussion tool that could be adapted to a blog. So why not just use those tools? Why bother to set up a blog outside of the course? The primary reason I see is audience. When learners complete written assignments in the classroom they are writing for an audience of 1. Instructors can ask them to pretend there are others who will read the work, but everyone knows that's not reality. Knowing your audience and understanding your audience is critical to good, effective writing. Using a blogging service outside of the password protected course environment gives the learner many other potential audiences. It's sometimes possible to make the audience from the non-classroom world formal – for example, by inviting a local historical society to read learner history blog posts.

An equally important second reason to consider requiring learner blogs is that they are a tool to encourage learners to reflect in writing on the course content. Reflection is an important step in knowledge retention. Too many learners simply cram for exams rather than thoughtfully considering material and reflecting on how the course content might be important in their lives.

If you are going to use blogs in a course then it's important to learn about RSS feeds. Learners are more likely to read the blogs you are reading if you feed the posts directly into the course shell. Doing this requires you to do a little coding in java script on a page in your course shell. Fortunately (for me anyway) you don't have to write the code by yourself, there are script generators available online. I used http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/p/138.html to generate the code required to add an RSS feed to a course in Blackboard Vista.


The above example isn't particularly attractive. It would be good to at least put it into a single cell table to address margin issues or maybe just pull in headlines from several posts (next image). The point though, is that this entry will change every time the author of the Cafe Hayek blog adds a new post, which in this case is typically several times a day. The instructor of the course can then use the blog posts to generate discussion in the discussion area of the course without having to search for new and timely topics on a regular basis.


So how do you get started with blogs? There are several free services available for hosting blogs such as www.blogger.com and www.WordPress.com. Before you dive into this it's also probably a good idea to read a few blogs. The top 100 education blogs can be linked to from this page – http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs.

So begin enjoying the world of blogs!

Lisa