Blogging in Professional Networks: Nov 8-26, 2010

Hi all, just catching the tail end of this conversation (or is it the beginning). I facilitated a discussion on Scope a year or so ago on Blogging and am still now using it actively in my university teaching; in fact I have just finished a short research project in which I have tried to identify student perceptions of the value of blogging as part of their study of literature. I am interested in the extent to which it assists their engagement with texts and with each other. Typically I mandate that students do a weekly blog on their literature reading (which can also include more personal reflections); they must also make a weekly comment on each other's work. I give them feedback on their grammar and writing skills and insist that these are A1. At the end of the semester they have a major project in which they utilize their semester worth of blogging and transform their work (critical, creative and reflective) into an ePortfolio. Currently I am using WordPress for their blogging and this turns nicely into a platform for their ePortfolio where they simply post "Pages" instead of "Posts".  While my work with on-campus students is behind a university Fire-wall I consistently copy my behind fire-wall blog onto a public blogging space. You can find these at either of the following two addresses:

http://michaelgriffith1.wordpress.com

http://michaelgriffith.livejournal.com

There is a little bit of local history involved with my switch from LiveJournal (which I still love) to WordPress. Our university mandated that for the purposes of student security they be put behind a fire-wall (not all were happy with this). So I was moved from LiveJournal to WordPress.org.

I have also published on my work. You can find a chapter in the book

Empowering Adult Learners through Blog: An Australian Case Study, (with Loong Wong), Chapter 2 of Adult Learning in the Digital Age.  Terry T. Kidd (Ed.). Igi Global: 2010. There is a link to this book at: http://www.igi-global.com/bookstore/Chapter.aspx?TitleId=36854

Look forward to hearing some responses

Best wishes

Michael (Australian Catholic University- Sydney Campus)

Hello Lystra,

Welcome to the blogging seminar!

I think that using blogs for chronicling is an important aspect of formal academic blogging. For me, this process of reporting and commenting on conferences and seminars involves jotting down notes, collecting short voice narrations, preparing and conducting short impromptu interviews with participants and presenters during coffee breaks and lunchtime, collecting and reflecting on backchannel Twitter commentary during presentations, and doing a post-conference blog post reviewing the archived presentations.

This reporting process takes several weeks, and lead to numerous posts, podcasts and uploaded files. I upload the raw notes, oultines, scanned images of conference notes, and voice notes to a sandbox part of my edublog, a more private "holding space".  I tag these these for my private use, categorizing them as separate artefacts that i might re-visit and re-use at some later time. I add meta-narrative, add context cues, so I can remember the context of the isolated tidbits and info-scraps.

I then begin weaving the content together as a narrative, linking and embedding the pieces into a series of posts. I am always looking for ways to tag and categorize these posts, and often check out the Tag Clouds of other edubloggers, to compare my tagging strategies with theirs. How did they do their tagging? What are they posting about? What data streams and info-scraps are they weaving into their narrative? What sources are they quoting, citing, or drawing from?

The chronicling process involves a cycle of reading others' blogs, filtering, synthesizing and sense-making. It is an example of how one can comfortably blog in the open by sharing one's thoughts and ideas and processes of idea capture.

reposted to my edublog here

Glenn

Hello Michael,

Thank you for this link.

I am an adult literacy instructor teaching English and Computers at Northwest Community College, in Prince Rupert, BC. I work with First Nations students and support remote delivery of upgrading courses for adult learners living in remote communities. This example of connecting off-campus leaners with on-campus learners is an amazing example of how to integrate blogging into instruction.

Blogging, for me, involves explorations, where learners engage in guided discovery learning. I use the image of the collection of kites flying high all tied to their guides by a string.

I was asked at a conference about the issue of assessment for students who are blogging. I came up with a tentative idea of tethered assessment - rather than placing assessment first, and then preparing an activity to match the outcomes, as is done in formal learning, blogging encourages us to engage in praxis, to perceive assessment in terms of how well a previously encountered event or activity has prepared us for the current event or activity. In effect, learners assess their learning based on how well it "fits" into the current requirements. A useful learning activity, then, for a blogger, is one that has had high relevance to current conditions, and one that has been referred to repeatedly over time to inform current/future practice.

Just an open thought- discussion?

Glenn

Posting assignments (Not blogging) Journaling, i.e. “this is what I did today.” (Not blogging) Posting links. (Not blogging) Links with descriptive annotation, i.e., “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description). Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging). Reflective, metacognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere). Links with analysis and synthesis that articulate a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience in mind. (Real blogging). Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links, and comments. (Complex blogging).