Blogging to Enhance Learning Experiences: Examples and Resources

Examples of Practice

• Kathy Cassidy's class blog from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
• Michael Griffith's reflection (.doc) on his use of blogs for university students
  
• Barbara Dieu's high school EFL class blog from Sao Paulo, Brazil (pages with std links on the right sidebar)
  
• Dekita Exchange (classes blogging) and Dekita Orchard (aggregation of students' posts)
  

What students say

• "I would say that for your first years blogs are a great tools for getting things off their chest and also for building connections with other students" Tamara Gardner
• "I've found that through the blogs not only are you more able to get to know the people in your classes, but you find them more approachable..." Tamara Gardner

Resources

• Is Blogging Accessible to People with Vision Loss?
  Alec Couros' wiki Digital Literacy and Emerging Educational Technology has a page about blogs.
• Disruptive Technologies: social software in education
  
• Blogs and community: launching a new paradigm for online community. article by Nancy White
  
• A Blogger's Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium, article by Danah Boyd
  
• For anything related to using Web 2.0 in the classrooms see Will Richardson's blog
• Barbara Dieu's 2005 Workshop on Weblogging Wiki 
  
• OWP2007 del.icio.us list on Open and Participatory Resources and Web 2.0
• Aaron Campbell's Comparative Review of Blogging Tools
• P2P (peer to peer) and Learning Ecologies article (Dieu, Campbell and Ammann)
  
• The Virtual University: models and messages
  

Participants Blogs

• Michael Griffiths, Literature & Life
• Michael Rees, Impressions Scholarcast
• Terry Wassall, blog at elgg.net and blog at Leeds Uni elgg.leeds.ac.uk
• Heather M. Ross, McToonish and OpenThinking
  
• SCoPE members' blogs
  

Beaut Blogging Tools

• Edublogs provides free blogs for teachers and K-12 students, and for higher education students. For a fee, Edublogs Premium supports a customised, controlled blogging environment.
  
• Photobucket (http://photobucket.com/) - easy way to upload still and video images into your blog.
  
• Flickr.com (digital photography album and social networking platform)
  
• WordPress.com (open source free platform on their server)
  
• Wordpress.org (open source personal install on your server)
  
• Wordpress MU (open source multi-user install)
  
• Performancing plug-in for Firefox
• Blogger.com
• iobloggo.com
• http://elgg.net/
• Windows Live Writer
• WriteToMyBlog supports Flickr and Youtube
  
• Flock
• LiveJournal x
• GoogleDocs - option to post to multiple blogs
• Movable Type
• Blogmeister
• Bloglines
• Freewebs
• .Mac
• Edublogs
• desktoptwo
• b2evolution
• wBloggar
• Deirdre's annotated tool Wiki
  

Editors

The main issue seems to be management to images and media files.

On your computer:

qumana    http://www.qumana.com/download.htm
windows life writer http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

On the web:

Write to my blog  http://writetomyblog.com/

Browser based ??

Performancing Firefox plugin