Educational Technology 11 – Educ 4039
September 22, 2009
Class 3 (3 Hours)
Dr. Diane P. Janes – Diane_Janes@cbu.ca – Office hours by appointment – Phone: 563-1236

Blogging and Wikis as a Teaching Tool

Although some instructors use blogs to post class times, assignments, exercises and suggested readings, the true potential of blogs in education lies in the fact that they can be used to engage students in research, exploration and discussion and that they encourage collaboration and peer interaction. Educational research stresses the importance of social interaction in learning. Drawing on Vygotsky (1978), many educators emphasize the "knowledge construction" process and argue that "meaning making" develops through social interaction. With blogs material becomes accessible for reflection and discussion. The comment feature of blogs provides opportunities for feedback which, in turn, supports learners in their effort to construct knowledge. According to Ferdig and Trammell (2004), blogs encourage students to take ownership of their learning and publish authentic artifacts containing their thoughts and understanding.
Ferdig and Trammell (2004) maintain that both tools are similar; blogs, however, provide a more sophisticated environment. Blogs allow students to establish personal and intellectual ownership as well as full control over their online artifacts, while discussion forums are generally shared by many. And unlike in hierarchical, topic-based discussion forums, blogs allow us to post ideas or concepts and have reactions to them. Besides, hyperlinks play a more important role in blogs.
Glogoff (2005) claims that blogs support
• Knowledge Centered Instruction

At the beginning students should get instructions on how to create and maintain their blogs. For course assignments they can be directed to specific websites for research. After synthesizing and interpreting the findings and combining the results with their own ideas, students can publish their concepts in their blogs. In addition, students and practitioners can interact and exchange ideas.
• Learner Centered Instruction

This approach acknowledges learners as individuals and as a group. Here blogs can be used to give students positive feedback about their postings or comments (since blogs are public, instructors should use e-mail or f2f contact to discuss critical comments). Because blogs can be commented on, they also provide excellent opportunities for feedback and cognitive scaffolding (students can revisit the learning space, build on prior knowledge and drill deeper for information).
• Community Centered Instruction

Vygotsky (1978) emphasizes the importance of social interaction in learning. He argues that social learning leads to cognitive development. Blogging encourages and supports peer interaction. Class members can read postings from their fellow students, comment on the value and relevance of the blog entry in regard to their own experiences and suggest additional resources.
After having used blogs extensively in several classes, Glogoff (2005) carried out an anonymous assessment survey. His students reported that the peer-review capabilities of blogging contributed to a better understanding of the course content.
Scenarios of how blogs can be used in pedagogical practice

Blogs for knowledge construction: Students choose a topic (from a proposal list) they are interested in and regularly write blog entries about their own research, their findings, their progress and difficulties. By generating a blogroll students identify and target a particular subject related audience and discourse community. Community members can assist with feedback and comments. Subsequently, such a group of subject related blogs becomes a "knowledge creation community".

Blogs for reflective learning: Students use blogs to report about their internships (e.g. in schools, companies, etc.) or field work and critically reflect on their experiences, progress and deficiences. Thereby, they can gain knowledge and meaning for further professional development.

Blogs to enhance writing skills: Students use blogs to post their responses to class readings, including interpretations, critiques, comments and personal thoughts. Maybe a journalist or professional writer can be won to volunteer as editor. Also, pre-service teachers could collaborate with K12 students and give them feedback about their writing. In return, they would gain valuable experience.

Group Blogs: Students participate in a field trip, student exchange or work placement program (e.g. Leonardo Mobility Project) and blog the trip live each day. Parents and peers can participate in the students' experiences and add comments. An online school or faculty newspaper could be another scenario for a group blog.
Ferdig and Trammell (2004) provide useful recommendations for a successful blog integration
• Visit other classroom blogs first, i.e. to find classroom blogs that are related to your specific topic and check out how others have implemented blogs in their teaching.
• Spend enough time to explain the concept of blogging, how it is done and why this tool is used in class.
• Provide a set of strict rules for blogging such as frequency, length of entries, number of hyperlinks and relevance to the topic.
• Point out, what is appropriate in a blog; clearly communicate that blog entries are publicly accessible.
• Create assignments that require students to post entries.
• Require students to read each other's entries and make three substantive comments per week; this ensures participation and is essential to validating students' contributions.
• Try to make blogs more public. Get professionals or external people to visit the student blogs and comment on them; this often leads students to be more careful in preparing blog entries and think more critically because of this worldwide dissemination.
"Weblogs in Higher Education" provides a rubric, on how blogs can be evaluated (posting of Dec. 19th).
With all the hype about blogging, let's pause for a moment and reflect whether blogging can really support learner-centered teaching and constructivism? Or is it just another fad?

Downes (2004) points out that blogging can and does have a significant impact in education, however, this impact does not come automatically and does not come without risks. He argues that blogging is all about conversation. For a conversation to be successful, it must have a purpose and it must be unconstrained. But what happens when the necessary rules are imposed on student blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get them to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don't post false, offensive, libelous or misleading information? In addition, a lot of questions about copyright issues come up when it comes to blogging.

Blogging is time consuming! We should not underestimate the amount of time and energy required to read, make sense and write blog entries.
Hosted Services

A hosting service gives you access to everything you need to create and maintain a blog. The best-known free hosting service is Blogger. Other major free hosting services are Xanga and WordPress .

Installed Applications

An installed application is a piece of software that needs to be installed on your web server. Well-known installed applications are Moveable Type , Serendipity and Drupal . Installed services generally offer more features than free hosted services.




Activity –
Each of you pick two of the following 4 articles and post a critique on your blog describing the key points of the article.
Read Blogging: Advantages of Blogging as a Teaching Tool blogged Wed, Apr 15, 2009, by Lila S. Kallstrom
http://webupon.com/blogging/blogging-advantages-of-blogging-as-a-teaching-tool/
Read Review K-12 Education Blogging
http://www.blogged.com/directory/education/k-12-education
Read “Best of Education Blogs” Awards
www.eschoolnews.com/news/pdf/best_of_the_ed_blogs.pdf
Read “Moving toward Web 2.0 in K-12 Education” by Steve Hargadon
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/moving-toward-web-20-in-k-12-education/

Activity:
Find an example of a Blog used in each of your teaching areas and post a description on your own blog. How was it used? What learning theory does it support? How effective does the use of blogging in this context, appear to be?
Watch - Top 10 Reason's to Use a Blog in the Classroom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfJETK3am1M&feature=related
Why let our students blog?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKoEZJseVXU&feature=related


WIKIS as Teaching Tool
Ward Cunningham, and co-author Bo Leuf, in their book The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web described the essence of the Wiki concept as follows:
• A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.
• Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not.
• A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.
A wiki enables documents to be written collaboratively, in a simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki website is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire collection of pages, which are usually well interconnected by hyperlinks, is "the wiki". A wiki is essentially a database for creating, browsing, and searching through information.
A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Many wikis are open to alteration by the general public without requiring them to register user accounts. Sometimes logging in for a session is recommended, to create a "wiki-signature" cookie for signing edits automatically. Many edits, however, can be made in real-time and appear almost instantly online. This can facilitate abuse of the system. Private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them.
ACTIVITY –
Read ‘Wiki as a Teaching Tool’ by Parker and Chao (2007)
http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p057-072Parker284.pdf
Read “Be Constructive: Blogs, Podcasts, and Wikis as Constructivist Learning Tools”
By Joyce Seitzinger
http://www.elearningguild.com/pdf/2/073106DES.pdf
Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom
http://tinyurl.com/kv7t2

You will need to sign in if not already a member of "Innovate Journal of Online Education".. free
A Rubric for the Assessment of Wikis
http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson979/WikiRubric.pdf

Watch - Wikis in the classroom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pR5yogCmkA&feature=related
Teaching with Wiki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdOKUeT0O-o&feature=related

Blogs and Wikis – oh my!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDOEezxapqM&feature=channel