Josie Fraser – history of blogs…
Intro. to blogging in education. Comparison of blog tools available.
History
1997 weblog in OED (really?)
1999 Blog coined
Technorati -eg of business that has grown around blogs
20 billion blogs by Oct 2005, 80k per day
Formats and tools
Ease of use
public and ungated – this is a debate within education, should they be open to all
Short posts, developmental, subjective, informal ‘enmeshed in distributed conversations’
Web 2.0 – user centred platform
That Downes man again (as in Stephen) – e-learning 2.0, recent article from ‘foremost edublogger in the world’ (!)
All types of users in education, at every level.
Finding a voice – a ‘blogging voice’. What do I want to say and how?
Schools – Musselburgh Grammar School using blogs for exchange purposes.
Researcher and edtech blogs – community of practice, Downes, Derek Morrison, James Farmer
edublog milestones – Gateshead Library since 2001. edublogs.org from James Farmer 1000th blog in 2 months, for educators. Now provides blogs for students.
edublogger directory
student blogs – to fulfil assessments
this is quite rushed!!!
Future VLE – Scott Wilson ‘the most popular diagram in e-learning world’
Comparison of blog tools
multi user and individual blog tools – wordpress recommended for multiusers
20six, aclblogs.net, aclearn weblogs toolkit, blogger, elgg, typepad, yahoo, xanga
Comparison chart (MS Word file)
The next part of the workshop was to go off and try another example of some blog software. I thought I’d go and try elgg as it has the added educational dimension that the others do not. It also has a social aspect through the use of FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) social networking and linking people by the use of tags. See my first elgg post!!
Now it’s time for lunch!
Good to see WordPress getting the thumbs up for multiusers! Looks like you had a good day?