Group One Tools (Blogs, Wikis and Websites) – Looking at Blogs

The tools explored in this topic are blogs, wikis and websites. While these three entities are separate and distinct, I do not think they are necessarily mutually exclusive. I have had prior experience with all of these tools before, so thusly found this section of work quite basic. I will examine my experiences, thoughts and analysis of each tool in the relevant posts.

If I were to put it in my own words, I would say that basically a blog is an online collection of articles (or posts) in decrementing chronological order, that are intended to be read by others. A post can have embedded multimedia elements, as well as link to other parts of the blog or external websites. As opposed to a static website, it is intended to be updated at regular intervals to add new content.

From my own experience, I know that blogs are used for a variety of purposes, such as:

• Weekly review of movies, tv shows, restaurants etc.
• Current news events
• Sharing life stories
• Online journal for projects/research
• Comedy
• Cooking/Sharing recipes
• Tutorial summaries

Basically any topic that involves keeping a journal or can be regularly updated is an appropriate use of a blog.

The RSS protocol is used to show changes to websites that are updated frequently, such as news sites and blogs. This would allow students to receive notifications when the teacher updates the blog. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I have had a lot of experience in IT and would find it a reasonably simple task to write a software program for computer or smart phone that would give a notification that the site has been updated and show the new post, without the possibility of students adding other pages to the reader and potentially losing the information among myriads of other posts from other sources.

Below is a PMI analysis of blogs and blogging (tailored for educational use).

Plus:

•  Allows delivery and summary of content that can be used outside of the classroom
• Compatibility with the RSS protocol allows quick and easy notification of updates
• Comments can provide feedback
• Students can use them as a journal, real or fictional, for assessment
•  By writing the content themselves it is possible students will be more interested in the topic
•  Easy to navigate due to chronological ordering
• Anything coded in html can be embedded
• Integration with multimedia allows for greater learning opportunities

Minus:

• Most drawbacks arise from most systems (such as Blogger) being public access
• Public access allows anybody to read posts
• If comments are not disabled, allows anybody to post defamatory or derogatory comments
• If comments are disabled, genuine feedback cannot be given

Interesting:

• Smart phone integration means posts can be read (or even edited) on the go
• Allows quick and easy integration with the digital era