New Blogging - SCOPE forum

http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=425

Idees extretes del forum New blogging, dincs del seminari de SCOPE de blogs del mes de febrer.

- I’ve spoken with a few people who, unfortunately, do not see blogs as collaborative.

“I’ve found that through the blogs not only are you more able to get to know the people in your classes, but you find them more approachable…
For instance “hey aren’t you….. I read your entry/I commented on your entry about…..”

Her comment provides “hard evidence” for the socializing function of Blogs in a University setting.
- Blogs grow organically from individual input to group collaboration.
This has been precisely my experience with a class full of students where they begin as individuals and gradually tune into each other’s voices and experience……
…one has to nurture this process otherwise it may not happen…

- You are of course right Peter. Michael has indicated one problem with Bb - blogs cannot be seen in other courses besides the one they are in - not without a $30K plug in. I’ve hit this wall with a project in a school here - “Can everyone have a blog visible to everyone in each course in subject X - located in webCT” - the answer: no.

The second issue is whether they have them minimum functionality of blogs. See below for a screen snap. What do you see? No blog roll and no tags. I think these are aspects that add the ‘blog’ dimension to a mere reverse chronological list of posts.

- Another thing I don’t see in your screenshot, Derek, is an RSS feed. Does this mean that teachers using a WebCT platform have to enter the platform in order to know what students are posting on each of their blogs?

I was on a Swiss forum once, where we were trying out WebCT: I found it most irritating, but that was years ago. It could have got better since? (could hardly have got worse…)

- blogs are, of their nature, a means of communication that lies outside the hierarchical formal structures.

- http://incsub.org/blog/2005/you-blog-alone-thats-the-point i http://incsub.org/blog/2006/group-blogs

- I use both threaded discussions within my teaching AND blogs. For me they are quite different.
A threaded discussion (provided as a tool within Blackboard and WebCT) provides a (usually) text-only space where a question(s) can be posed and students answer the question in a thread of responses.
EG Tolstoy’s Story Death of Ivan Illych his hopeful despite Ivan’s agonizing death. Why?

Students will typically answer this question one after the other commenting, expanding, suggesting resources,building on each others observations etc etc… At the end of the day we have created a good resource on Tolstoy’s story and we have enabled 20 students to demonstrate their skills of understanding and collobaration.

A blog is a space where someone can first and foremost, create their persona, project an image of who they are, what they like, what they think… and from there they can engage in a whole range of activities from expressing their thoughts on topics dear to them, to sharing their photographs, videos and music, to engaging with a group of like-minded individuals (friends) in vigorous debate. They can also use it as a space where they can develop and store their creative work in a variey of media: image, text, video, sound… A good example of this from one of my students is the LiveJournal of Marc http://ghettoman7.livejournal.com who has been able to develop his literary and artistic talents in tandem ….
so as I see it a blog has a much wider range of possibilities- beyond the merely cerebral and intellectual- to the creative… it is in fact an artistic canvas that can be filled in many individualistic and collaborative ways…..
- Another thing is that in the discussion spaces you expect the people with access to them (sometimes the whole of the unit or sometimes people in your particular discussion group) to be reading all of the posts that are made.
The impact that this has is that these posts are generally more formal, and when it comes to expressing individual opinions, sometimes these are “sofened”, or put across in a more “correct” way.

- I think that the two are different cases. To me, a discussion is a group discussion - much as you may have in a seminar for a face to face course. I would have a few more than 7 or 8 in an asynchronous group though - but probably not more then 20, depending on the nature of the discussion & also the level of engagement expected (e.g. if they are going to be assessed & have a minimum number of posts to make, then a lower number; if it’s a board to ask questions about software they’re learning to use, then more in the group - as it’s more likely someone else will know the answer. )

However, I see a blog as a rather different case. Each blog belongs to a particular student. Yes, they like to get comments from each other & indeed, you may have asked them to do it for grades. However, they don’t *have* to read them all, in the same way as you do for a discussion board.

I’d definitely advocate a single blog (per student) for the whole course (assuming that students can set permissions, so they can have areas that not everyone can see). Many of our students find it difficult to see that Unit A has direct relevance on Unit B. I try to encourage them to see that they can start to draw links between subjects through their blogs.