Blogging in Higher Ed

PhD blog

2006-12-31T20:18:00.000Z

I've decided to try and keep a blog of thoughts and so on as I set out on the long road to a PhD... I chose Wordpress as several friends were using it and the features seem about right for what I want...

Using Weblog at NTU

2006-11-30T09:44:00.000Z

Hi Guys
First posting to here. I have been using a Weblog with my dissertation students since start of term. Trying out some various uses in this area so have a look and comment if you wish. Happy to discuss some of the issues I have found already. These are all mature students, some with technophobia but most are willing to engage. Discovered some nice suprises and benefits as well.

www.keystoneproject.net

love
Dave

Testing with Live Journal

2006-10-10T16:16:00.000Z

OK, So we've (Helen Boulton & Jane McNeil) have launched LiveJournal on NTU students as of the last couple of days. LiveJournal seemed to meet the needs of the module giving closed blogs visible only to 'friends'. Hopefully in the next few days/weeks there'll feedback on the understanding of the process and usefulness of blogging as a way of keeping an online journal. I'll keep you informed when we know more. If not give myself or Phil Pierce a prod.

Success with LiveJournal

2006-07-31T10:47:00.000Z

Hello Fellow Bloggers,

We have made some progress with the situation described in a previous post, where my semi-anonymous friend "Jane" wanted to create a series of private blogs for her students (for the sake of argument, history students). We have tried out LiveJournal, and it seems to meet our needs. There are options to make your own blogg completely private, or to open it up to certain individuals or groups, or to go public. We have tested this with three dummy accounts, and it seems to work exactly as we want.

So, we are going to try setting up accounts for students (80+!) before the start of term, and assign each of them around four friends. These friends will then form small discussion groups where students can only see, and comment on each others blogs within these groups. They will also have the opportunity to add other friends later on, from other groups if they want.

Might this be of interest to anyone else? Does anyone have any comments - particularly about any potential pitfalls I may not have seen?

Phil

Blogs and discussion areas

2006-07-21T21:12:00.000Z

I found this site http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000768.html which gives a really helpful table about the difference between blogs and message boards, which I roughly translate as discussion areas.

I've been thinking this week about the community piano in Sheffield. And then about the successful community whiteboard (yes, a tangible solid object) in Lionel Robbins, trying to see how they relate to a successful educational blog. But I guess, from the commoncraft site, they are clearly discussion areas, though there are areas of overlap with blogs.

Incidentally, there's an intersesting review of Wiki: web collaboration on page 21 of the THES this week. At £38.50 I think I will ask the Library to buy it.

Edu-blogging - technicalities and controversies

2006-07-14T14:20:00.000Z

Fellow bloggers,

I have this erm... friend - we'll call her "Jane", who feels blogging would be a very suitable teaching tool for one of her classes. However, owing to the nature of the classes (for the sake of argument, an example could be discussion of the holocaust, including such extremely controvertial ideas like "did it happen") it would be desirable to prevent it from being viewable by anyone.

This would enable students to discuss freely, without causing offence to the public and not feeling unduly inhibited from exploring and expressing their ideas. As far as I can see, on most blogging software it is only possible to restrict who can comment, not who can view. Does anyone happen to know if there is a blogging service equivalent to Blogger where this is possible? The idea would be to set up groups of "friends" who can view and / or comment, including the tutor "Jane" and other students.

I have tried using the Webboard based blog software with this in mind, but got suckered into looking like a prat from the start. AFTER you have posted to the blog, you can see every post made by everyone to that "blog" (ie conference). So my first random test post, which seemed to me to be part of a new, private blog, was actually part of a fairly public blog that already existed that I simply couldn't see until it was too late. It's not a very user-friendly interface IMHO. A bit more controversy there.

So does anyone know of a free commercial service that fits the bill? Or would indeed the WebBoard version do the job?

Phil

PS - nothing against any Aston Martin owners amongst us...

Weblogs: supporting research through integration

2006-07-04T10:58:00.000Z

Like Bob's friend Stephen Powell I have a Weblog/online-journal that I use as part of my PhD research. I find it very useful for collecting citations and examples of design practice. And because I built the tool myself I was able to experiment with the form a bit. My Weblog Constellations combines both Weblog and Wiki-like features: posts are listed in reverse chronological order (like a Weblog); as well as being clustered with related posts (like a Wiki).
Another aspect that I find useful is a page that lists posts according to their viewed frequency (calculated through combining the total quantity of viewings and the relative recentness of each post being viewed): Constellations: What's Popular. I find this aspect personally useful for helping me identify viewing trends.

Other HE blogs

2006-06-30T08:13:00.000Z

A quick search using blogger's own search turns up

Inside Higher Ed
Higher Education Insight
EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online
Syndication for Higher Ed

Privacy

2006-06-28T23:07:00.000Z

I posted this on the 'other blog' too. How private is this blogger blog. can you find it without knowing its URL? I think it is pretty secure, but I might just be naïve!

Another example of a HE blog

2006-06-28T22:38:00.000Z

My ex colleague and mate Stephen Powell uses a blog as an ongoing refelctive journal and the comments and entries therein are forming crucial data collection for his PhD research.

7 things you should know about blogs

2006-06-26T11:35:00.000Z

That's the title of a 2005 paper on blogging, and which has relevance for learning and teaching. Here's a link to it:

http://educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7006.pdf

By the 'EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative', it's brief and introductory. It doesn't say anything really profound but makes a few points of note, including these:

Blogs can be used for reflection about classes, careers, or current events.
They can capture and disseminate student- and faculty-generated content.
Blogs offer students, faculty, staff, and others a high level of autonomy while creating a new opportunity for interaction with peers.

The paper also notes some of the 'downsides' of blogs, including content which may be acceptable in some locations but not on institutional servers. Another concern is about intellectual property: hosting content which has been used without proper attribution.

Bob

Blogging hazards (Chapter 2)

2006-06-23T09:27:00.000Z

Another problem with blogs is that they can become distractions from the supposed task in hand. Create a good blog and people will use it.

Example: I’m writing this in a lecture theatre equipped with open Wi-Fi access. Full marks to the university for trying to enable students to study from wherever, whenever. But the speaker at the front is really droning on. Ho hum.

Bing! A bit of blogging will be more fun. And the stupid old git will just think I’m taking notes on his ‘interesting’ subject. Let’s post some twaddle to show my mates I’m cool…

Blogging hazard

2006-06-23T00:52:00.000Z

One of the hazards of running a serious blog is that a smart alec will make a 'clever' posting when he is 'tired and emotional'.

In that vein, here is a photo which could have appeared in a university's glossy magazine - three random people grinning like idiots at some event or other. Where were they? Can't remember. The bloke in the middle: would you even pay him in washers?

As ever, discuss.

Hallo from Frank Abbott

2006-06-21T13:14:00.000Z

Students From Musashino Arts University, Tokyo, at The Bonington Building, Nottingham Trent.

Here are some links to the blogs I spoke about at our first meeting.

The blog based on the student exchange visit to Tokyo is

http://www.Tokyofrank.blogspot.com/

The blog by one of our postgraduate students looking at the way he is developing work in the vitual reality games programme "Second Life" and ,as he describes it, "sits half way between the academic and a diary"

http://garethdoodles.blogspot.com

Our Creative Collaborations blog which I was commentoing on as becoming unwealdy and ripe for being turned into a website is at

Http://wwwcreativecollaborations.blogspot.com

It is now more of an archive than a blog!

Have a look at them.

2006-06-20T19:27:00.000Z

A picture is worth 1,000 words, or so it is claimed. Well, how much is 1,000 words worth? Last week I found the notice (left) on a street lamp on the campus at the University of Toronto.

Discuss, as the examiners often say.

Or - sticking more closely to the theme of the blog - how could an entry consisting of the photo and the first two paragraphs of this post facilitate discussion of the education-related topics of essay mills and plagiarism? Let's see!

Bob

2006-06-15T19:59:00.000Z

Naace is the association for "the advancement of ICT in education". It is based here at Clifton and publishes two quarterly journals - Computer Education and Primary Focus. The current (summer 2006) issues of the journals have articles about using online tools. These have a wealth of things about blogging, forums, messaging, wikis etc.

Examples of educational blogs cited are Long Road, Cambridge and Musselburgh School. The latter is a website built around blogs and collaborative authoring.

Computer Education also has an article suggesting that Nottingham is the centre of wireless learning because of developments at Nottingham University, Djanogly, NCSL and Naace itself (but not NTU!).

2006-06-13T14:47:00.000Z

Hi fellow NTU Bloggers.

I have a blogg related question that I would appreciate advice on. About a year ago I was approached by a geography lecturer who wanted to incorporate a web design element into a geography module about globalization, to run in the coming ('06-07) academic year. She wanted to create a link (metaphor?) between how globalization has occured, and the creation of the Web. The idea was that students would work in groups to produce a website, each member producing their own page documenting and sharing information and experiences.

To me, this sounds like a good candidate for blogging. While blogging doesn't cater for the web design element (at least in the strictest sense) it does allow students to form opinions, and link to sources on the web. At the time neither of us were that sure about the ins and outs of blogging, which is why I started to look into it, and created my heavily used and regularly updated blog, room246.

Currently, I think that blogging would really fit the bill. Blogging software is easy to use and set up, which given the restrictive nature of NTU on the web is a significant plus (am I allowed to say that?). In technical terms, there is little getting in the way of a flow of thought and dialogue, which is ultimately more what the web is about, than web design skills. Also, blogging itself is becoming recognised as a mainstream activity, perhaps making it a valid choice from an institutional point of view.

Rather than co-operating on a website, students could simply link to each others blogs.

However, there is the issue of control, which (for me) poses the following questions -

what if students start posting things they really shouldn't - how do you stop them?
Who carries the can? The university, the academic concerned, or the technical bod (me!)?
Where do you draw the line - ie if a student starts posting material that could be related to their work, but which might also cause offence, where do you stop things?

My own answers to these questions are as follows:

Threaten to give zero marks.
Probably the academic?
I have no idea!

Does anyone else have any further comment? I would like to recommend to the academic concerned that she uses blogging software, but I don't want to send her into battle unprepared!

Phil

2006-06-13T12:38:00.000Z

Is it good netiquette to add your name at the end of a post? Is there any netiquette associated with blogging?

2006-06-11T22:07:00.000Z

It says that I made the last post at 2.52pm, but it's 11.05pm. How odd!

2006-06-11T21:52:00.000Z

I have never blogged before - I'm a newbie blogger. Apart from my panic post last week, this is really the first time I have contributed to a blog. And I feel quite directionless, unsure what to do.

I have engaged in threaded discussions in the past. There was always a clear purpose - a task to perform, a question to respond to. Those were closed discussions and I felt comfortable with them, although my students found the experience quite scary at first. In this blog, I am opening myself to 'the world' and I am not comfortable with that though, intellectually, I can justify the action.

How do other newbie bloggers respond emotionally to their first posting?

2006-06-09T15:54:00.000Z

The blog I set up last autumn for my tutorial groups is at http://hughmiller3.blogspot.com/.
Hugh

2006-06-09T10:27:00.000Z

Howdy fellow bloggers,

I am going to order a book about RSS feeds as part of my staff development efforts. This may be of interest to us as bloggers, what with RSS being a blogging technology. I must confess that I know very little about RSS despite having used it. It does however come in three flavours, and on a hot day like today I can only hope one is rasperry ripple... with lots of ripple...

Anyway, (ahem) RSS can be used to feed geographic data for web-based mapping. For an example, see http://worldkit.org/

Phil

2006-06-08T17:04:00.000Z

Is it the heat or the time of day? Access to this blog seems very slow ...

2006-06-08T13:08:00.000Z

Follow-up links

After the meeting the following comments and links came in.

From Helen Boulton:
Just to add a couple of useful links:
One is an article on the use of blogging in HE which is interesting: ‘Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector’, by Jeremy B Williams (Universitas 21 Globalin) and Joanne Jacobs (Queensland University of Technology) in Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2004, 20(2), 232–247, see http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/williams.html

And Paul Trafford’s ‘Mobile Blogs, Personal Reflections and Learning Environments’ addresses some of the issues educators face when using blogging – some very useful links at the end to further articles and research. See http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue44/trafford/intro.html#3

From Phil Pierce:
This is the link to a blog I set up last summer. It is not exactly active, but does contain plenty of useful links. http://room246.blogspot.com/

From Pete Bradshaw:
The blog in which a teacher is documenting the use of blogs in high schools that I mentioned today can be found at http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/

Other sources that may be of interest:
Stephen Downes: http://www.downes.ca/ (Canadian e-learning guru)
Ultraversity Blogs: http://terminator.ultralab.net/blog_of_blogs/ (as demonstrated: an aggregated RSS feeds from blogs of students and tutors on the BA Learning Technology research)
MIDWHEB: http://www.midwheb.org.uk (Use of blogs as portals for MA level work with teachers' CPD at Middx University - I'm the external)

Alison Littler, EDU

Getting Started

2006-06-08T08:55:00.000Z

This week a group of interested (and interesting :-)) staff from a number of schools across Nottingham Trent University met to talk about the uses of blogging in higher education.

Some of the questions we discussed were: What is a blog, and what are its features? How are blogs best used in learning environments? How do we teach with them? What’s the difference between discussion boards and blogs? How time intensive is managing a blog? Can we/ should we make blogging mandatory, or keep it an optional activity?

Frank Abbott from Art and Design and Pete Bradshaw from Education showed us examples of blogs they’d created and/or worked with and talked about the why and how of setting up and running them.

Both Frank and Pete pointed out the importance of defining the blog’s purpose, its audience and its community before setting it up.

At the end of the discussion, the group decided to set up two blogs. This ‘open’ blog is set up as a place to continue the discussion. And a second, ‘prescribed’ blog will be set up the University’s VLE to discuss matters that are relevant to our own institutional setting. It is in this second blog that we hope to develop guidelines for colleagues on good practice for blogs in higher education.

Alison Littler, EDU

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