Book Objective

Book Objective

by Jeffrey Keefer -
Number of replies: 11

I think this is a great book idea, but I think I want to first discuss the objectives for the book, especially before discussing the potential chapters. Blogging is a wide topic, as well as education, so what objective do we want to have in writing a book? What is the expected audience? Will this be more academic or more practitioner focused? Do we want to book to be an integrated whole or have chapters that are somewhat unrelated (save blogging in education)?

What do you think?

 

In reply to Jeffrey Keefer

Re: Book Objective

by Silvana Carnicero -
I think the book could have as main objective how blogging can enhance learning from different points of views, in different teaching situations and as a complement for different classroom tasks. Hope this wide idea may be useful.
 
Regards,
 
Silvana Carnicero
In reply to Silvana Carnicero

Re: Book Objective

by Michael Griffith -
I think that is an excellent idea Sylvia.... I would be happy to write a chapter (or contribute to a chapter) on innovative uses of Blogging in the tertiary humanities classroom... am having a ball inducting first year students into LiveJournal Blogging as we speak: I attach a PDF file of some of the student LiveJournal URL addresses: this is a growing list (there will be 200 on it by the end of next week). Here they begin to connect with other students, make friends and share their ideas about their first weeks back in class...
See attached....
Cheers
Michael

And by the way- I just discovered this wonderful program (pdf enhancer) which has enabled me to compress a pdf file into about 90% of its size with very little reduction in quality.... but they want $200 for it... but let me use it for 10 days for free.... are there any open source versions of this out there (for mac!)?

In reply to Silvana Carnicero

Re: Book Objective

by Robin Yap -
I like that objective as well Silvana. My doctorate focus is on outsourced training so I could write on how blogging can be leveraged for corproate instructors and training departments in general (hmmm, that'd be two chapters).
In reply to Silvana Carnicero

Re: Book Objective

by Sylvia Currie -
Thanks for asking us to step back to look at objectives, Jeffrey! Silvana's statement is nice and concise, but broad enough to invite variety.

I imagine this book to be quite practical, and to include some cases and descriptions of strategies that illustrate some of the how tos of integrating blogs in different teaching and learning contexts. The audience would be practitioners in all education sectors. The important thing is to keep it focused on education -- something education practitioners can use. In other words we don't want to slide into other uses like marketing, personal travel journals, etc. 

Is this sounding too wide open?

In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Book Objective

by Michael Griffith -
Hi Sylvia- I am trailing a little on this one... first week of teaching... sorting out tutorials etc... is very hectic. But I agree that the focus should definately be on what people in education (at all levels) can use. I have offered (you may have missed this) a chapter (with others as necessary, on the use of Blogging in Humanities education at tertiary level,
Cheers
Michael
By the way... you (or anyone) may be interested in looking in at how my students this semester are beginning to manipulate their Literature Blogs in the first weeks. I have asked them to send me their URLs... and they are coming... but it takes time to get them all on board. See attached....
In reply to Michael Griffith

Re: Book Objective

by Francesc Balagué -

Hi Michael,


Taking a look in your students' blogs, I was thinking about blog technologies. You use Livejournal, I use wordpress... should this fact has a specific space in the book? How we will deal with this?

In our experience, to choose blogger or wordpress, or whatever, had some implications in blogging possibilities, and was not a simple decision...

I don't think that we should explain each one, but maybe a little space (a table?) with references, possibilities, pros & cons, etc. will help teachers who want to start blogging...

¿Any suggestion?

Cheers,

francesc

In reply to Francesc Balagué

Re: Book Objective

by Michael Griffith -
Hello Francesc- that is an excellent idea. At the very least we could list the qualities that we found in the particular technologies we have chosen- why we have found them user-friendly, why we would recommend them; we could also illustrate our recommendations with examples- Incidentally... have we any clear idea yet on how we are going to publishe this book. Were it on-line, then a lot of our illustrations would be easier to demonstrate....
More food for thought!
Cheers
Michael
In reply to Michael Griffith

Re: Book Objective

by Robin Yap -

Picking up on Michael's comments, in the corporate training arena, we determine technologies based on how our current network configuration is setup, the network administrator's competencies, as well as ability of the instructor to learn the blogging nuances at short periods of time. Unlike the academic world, our instructors's classes have shorter periods of time(sometimes 1-2 weeks, sometimes 1-3 days) so decisions on blogging and how that classroom experience can be extended poses a different set of goals.

Personally, my blog uses Movable Type, just because it was the first blogging software I was introduced in back in the early 2000s. But when I consult, I have to look at all the above requirements (limitations?) before suggesting which blogging software to look into.

In reply to Robin Yap

Re: Book Objective

by Emma Duke-Williams -
I'd be slightly wary of too much emphasis on the use of particular tools - given that they change over time.
One of the reasons that I got my students to move from Blogspot to Elgg was the fact that Elgg allowed greater granularity over viewing/ commenting permissions on particular posts. (There were other reasons as well). However, since making the move, blogspot changed to a different system - which now has more granularity than the old one (though not as much as Elgg).

I'm personally using WordPress for my own blog, but the books that I've found about using WordPress tend to be a little dated.

A current overview of what the main tools do could be useful, but it's only ever going to represent one point in time.

However, it could be useful to have information about the pros/cons of hosted "general" services (e.g. LiveJournal/ Blogspot) vs hosted "dedicated" services (e.g. Elgg/ Uniblogs), systems that require hosting (e.g. WordPress), tools embedded in other systems (e.g. Moodle blogs, WebCT blogs) and custom built ones (e.g. the one that Warwick have designed)
In reply to Emma Duke-Williams

Re: Book Objective

by Michael Griffith -
Hi Emma- I tend to agree that we ought to summarize some of the core differences between various tools which -as you say- are changing as we speak. I think what would also be very useful would be some kind of simple assessment of what the differences might be (with real examples) between blogs and -say- wikis: I know in my own university teaching there is generally a huge ignorance about what blogs and wikis are and when and how you might use any of them and why.... so maybe there needs to be some contextualizing chapter that looks at the distinctive functionality of blogs in the wider context of internet tools.....
how does that sound?
Michael
In reply to Sylvia Currie

Re: Book Objective

by Jeffrey Keefer -

OK, so the objective is something about education, seemingly from different orientations and with different audiences in mind.

Does this perhaps mean blogging as related to:

  • K-12
  • Adult
  • Social Justice
  • Corporate
  • Non-Profits
  • Government
  • Software applications
  • RSS and the like
  • etc.