Saturday, December 31, 2005

Using Blogs as part of Teaching

Yes the web is overwhelming, and information (knowledge?) management is a huge issue. There are solutions, but it takes a while to find them and then get into the habit of using them. That's the nature of the beast (feast)!

In my opinion, you do have to find a chunk of time almost every day but after the initial surveys of the terrain, you can decide on your focus and stay up-to-date in that area (depending on its breadth and complexity) with an aggregator (like Bloglines - which is free and easy to set up). I found this description of how a teacher could use Bloglines with a class really helpful - http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2004/03/03. After reading it I set up my own Bloglines account and now use it to track the educational blogs I'm interested in, scan their headings, and, if I'm interested in the topic, link to it and get the gist.

Blogs are being used more and more as part of teaching and learning. For a basic understanding of how to use blogs, check out Jakob Nielsen's info - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html - He's the senior acknowledged expert on web design.

http://www.weblogg-ed.com/why_weblogs provides an overview on using blogs in the classroom with lots of links to explore (Or not ;-> depending on your time and interest.)

Finally, here's a link to a short video describing the uses of blogging in high school - http://www.weblogg-ed.com/weblogs_in_ed_video

A friend says -
My feeling is that we have to treat "computer reading" like people used to treat reading the newspaper in the past. It was an activity that occupied a certain part of everyday.


and I agree.

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