This fall, the Faculty Support Centre will be testing out a "blog" service which will allow interested faculty to create and use blogs as a tool in their courses.

What's a Blog, and why would I want to create one?

"Blog" is short for weblog. A blog is an easy to use personal website/web journal, where you can quickly post thoughts and interact with people. A blog can include journal entries, commentaries, criticisms and/or recommendations authored by the user - often with links to updated headlines, news articles and other information from other sites which the user finds interesting and which back up their commentary with evidence.

Perhaps the best known blog hosting site, where users can create and post their blogs free of charge, Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), defines blogs as "… a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world… In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not."

Blogs in Education

Currently, weblogs are used to support learning most often in K-12 education. Students using blogs today in K-12 will be bringing their learning experiences and familiarity with the web as an online learning environment with them when they attend university. They join the "at least 3 million Americans who have created blogs, with similar numbers being seen worldwide."1

Students use blogs to create personal journals, or for group work/seminars and interactive discussions, to highlight a few uses. Blogs are sometimes used by teachers to replace standard class webpages, for which they are a basic and easy to use alternative, containing postings of class times and assignment notifications, required or suggested readings, and so on. Blogs are simply structured, normally with a title field (even that is optional) and entry field for the content (captured and displayed chronologically). When posted, the content appears with date and time of posting. Sometimes the title, name or IP address of the blogger, links to other content, or a "comment" link can also be added. Where a "comment" link appears allowing other readers to reply to the blog posting, students have access to ideas and opinions from users the world over.

For more information on the development and uses of blogging in education (including both pros and cons) and some examples of blogs, see the article on Educational Blogging by Stephen Downes in Educause Review, September/October 2004.

More Information

Faculty members who want to find out more about how a blog works or who are interested in assistance in setting up a blog for use in their class, can contact the Faculty Support Centre staff at ext. 55800 or by email at faculty@yorku.ca.

1Stephen Downes, Educational Blogging. Educause Review, Sept/Ocober 2004, Vol 39, No. 5, p. 2

<< newsletter home