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Everyone seems to be doing it, from retirees to teenagers. If blogging has helped ordinary folks to express themselves, think of what it can do for teachers!
This guide to blogging serves to provide you with a quick overview of the things that you need to get started, and, the steps required to incorporate blogging into your teaching and learning activities.
Getting Started: Plan!
Assuming you already know what blogging has to offer for education, you’ll need to decide which of your existing teaching and learning processes can be achieved with blogging.
Choose the blogging platform on which you intend to host the blogs. Freely available services include Blogger , LiveJournal and MSN Spaces . Blogs can also be hosted in school’s servers with blog engines such as Movable Type1 and Manila1 .
If you need to find out more about the potential of blogging in education, please refer to the “Weblogs in Education” document that can be downloaded in edu.MALL2 .
Next Step: Create The Blogs!
After the initial planning, it’s now time to create the blogs! If you are using freely available online services, you can either bring your students to a computer laboratory to create the blogs together, or you can allow them to create the blogs outside lesson time; if the blogs are hosted on the school’s servers, you can engage the server administrator’s help to create the blog.
Create and maintain a record of students’ blog addresses so that you can access their postings |
Step-by-step guides for Blogger and MSN Spaces are available from here and here .
Following Up: Monitor Blogging Actions!
Allow time for students to blog on assigned tasks. As they blog, the servers will automatically publish RSS3 feeds. To monitor their progress, you will need to use a RSS reader and subscribe to the feeds so that you can be notified of updates in the blogs.
An example of an online, web-based RSS reader is Bloglines and a step-by-step guide to account creation is available here .
To achieve better results with blogging, you’ll need to scaffold your students’ blogging processes. This includes advising them on what and how they should go about posting their reflections and organising their posts.
Taking Stock: Reflect on the Experience
Blogging is primarily a reflection process. The comments in blogs can facilitate exchange of ideas among students. Plan ahead, scaffold the students, monitor their progress and guide them where needed. Exchange tips with teachers who have already started their students on blogging, and in no time, your students will be benefiting from the blogging experience too!
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Related Link
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Footnotes
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Visit Movable Type and Manila for more information on their educational licence. |
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Read more about IT Literature Reviews at edu.MALL. |
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RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS feeds, formatted in XML, contains information on the updated posts in blogs. |
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