ELI Social Computing

What is the time stamp on this?

I have a few examples of educational blogging, but I will post them one by one, to test the function of the aggregator on the site. It will be lots of fun, really.

My first example in the class blog format. The idea is to create an active discussion outside of class, and in this case, at an institution that does not have an LMS such as Blackboard. Technically, it is easy to set up and manage: the instructor sets it up and would have absolute control over what shows up in the comments section.

The site is Theory Now and an example of an interesting post is a recent one on Performance Art. You can see that the commenters get into the discussion and begin to respond to each other, which is a nice rich discourse.

If I were setting up a class blog, I might also consider having students register as members and add posts. It would look more like this blog of the Instructional Technology program at UVA. Posts are contributed then by each member posting separately.

Laura mentioned a student who blogged and referenced the blog which is still available, but hasn’t been added to in a couple of years. When it is a student blog, I woudn’t worry about this. Blogs can start and stop and if it’s a personal expression or related to academic development, this isn’t a concern, at least not for me. However, if you are involved in students services and considering a blog as part of student outreach, I do think that you need to worry about content that doesn’t look fresh. I think it can send a worse message than never having started a blog at all… What do you think?

John @ Sandaig Primary is a blog about integrating ICT into a n elementary classroom in the UK. I would find this of interest as an instructor, as it offers insight into the various strategies, tools, and workarounds he is trying in order to get the technologies running smoothly. I would label this a Professional Development resource more than anything else.

I love that you can set a wordpress blog to be completely private!

However, I wonder if it might wreak havoc with aggregation. When I just tried to update the aggregation of the class blogs, it showed this link as broken, because the blog was set to private. Hmmmm….

The first meeting of our workshop is today.

This is a first test post to welcome all workshop participants to the first topic we will explore: Blogs in educational settings…