Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Can't leave a job unfinished. "Blogs: A Disruptive Technology Comes of Age?" provides a fairly standard history of blogging, its democratic/revolutionary promise, and a list of actual uses in education:
* Student logs (writing with various intentions) and portfolios
* A place for students, parents, and community members to collaborate
* Peer coaching environment for faculty
* Classroom management tool, e.g., place for posting assignments
* Knowledge management tool for compiling research logs, reference tools, policies and forms
Links to a few journalism weblogs are included, but no actual assessment of weblogging is provided. The article then gets a little more techie than most, moving from the standard (Blogger, Pita) to Perl applications, RSS, and open source initiatives.
The article concludes by saying that the growth of blogging may actually portend something: "When technology becomes simple enough, and leverages a basic human need, like communication, it becomes ubiquitous."
Maybe. As excited as we writers have been about blogging, my almost 1/2 way point assessment is that students don't like to write much, and still prefer email and IM. In a
link I followed, some bloggers talk about the time issue, and most say that they are simply putting writing they would do anyway online. Few of our students fit that profile. Even my most engaged student simply gave up blogging and said: I am happy to do the research, but I can't blog it too. Or something like that.
This piece has a nice collection of links worth following and reporting on! ; )
* Student logs (writing with various intentions) and portfolios
* A place for students, parents, and community members to collaborate
* Peer coaching environment for faculty
* Classroom management tool, e.g., place for posting assignments
* Knowledge management tool for compiling research logs, reference tools, policies and forms
Links to a few journalism weblogs are included, but no actual assessment of weblogging is provided. The article then gets a little more techie than most, moving from the standard (Blogger, Pita) to Perl applications, RSS, and open source initiatives.
The article concludes by saying that the growth of blogging may actually portend something: "When technology becomes simple enough, and leverages a basic human need, like communication, it becomes ubiquitous."
Maybe. As excited as we writers have been about blogging, my almost 1/2 way point assessment is that students don't like to write much, and still prefer email and IM. In a
link I followed, some bloggers talk about the time issue, and most say that they are simply putting writing they would do anyway online. Few of our students fit that profile. Even my most engaged student simply gave up blogging and said: I am happy to do the research, but I can't blog it too. Or something like that.
This piece has a nice collection of links worth following and reporting on! ; )
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