Recent releases
- Monday October 3 2011 János Varga (Cégep John Abbott College) Cloud-based Blended Synchronous/Asynchronous Shared Documents János Varga explains how cloud-based blended synchronous/asynchronous shared documents promote collaboration and active learning among students.
- Monday August 24 2009 Sophie Ringuet (Cégep@distance) Using On-line Academic Forums As students now collaborate on the web for academic purposes as well as for fun, the electronic forum has become an excellent tool to encourage academic motivation. Sophie Ringuet, a pedagogical counselor at Cégep@distance gives us an in-depth tour of what a forum is as well as various academic applications where the forum can be of interest. The report presents concrete examples and and a detailed guide to their use within an academic context. The reference section allows the reader to go beyond the information presented by indicating resources in both English and in French. We hope that you will find Profweb's article 'Using On-line Academic Forums' a useful resource to familiarize yourself with forums. Feel free to comment and ask questions in the sections provided for this purpose.
- Monday January 19 2009 Charles-Antoine Bachand (Cégep de l'Outaouais) Teaching and Learning Using Blogs Charles-Antoine Bachand of Cégep de l'Outaouais explains why and how blogs can be interesting pedagogical tools.
Reports List (10)
Reports
Teaching and Learning Using Blogs
Charles-Antoine Bachand
Educational Advisor, Cégep de l'Outaouais
Practical Applications
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
As discussed above, a multitude of ways to use blogs in a pedagogical context exists. Below, the steps necessary to provide students with a portfolio blog or a diary are presented.
HOW TO START PEDAGOGICALLY BLOGGING
In an imaginary situation, students have a long term assignment as part of their course. Periodically, they must hand in copies of progress reports explaining their activities, a projected schedule, and a preliminary project as well as their thoughts about these activities. What would be the best tool to use to accomplish this task?
Blogging could be the perfect solution. The blog would permit you to accomplish the following activities:
• Create an authentic situation;
• Promote self-reflection;
• Promote student exchange;
• Allow archival information;
• Create a feeling of control in students over their own learning process.
In fact, the steps presented below could lend themselves to any learning situation where students are required to formally consider their learning and the process of its acquisition.
Preparation
- Familiarisation : The first step of the process is to become familiar with blog creation. Logically, the best way to do this is to create your own blog using WordPress software. It is also possible to receive technical support for installation as well as to consult their website. Another option is to use very simple tools like Blogger or Posterous. Don’t forget to erase your first attempts! Visits to a certain number of other blogs are in order to familiarize yourself with their operation. Take a look at the blog by D. Warlick http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/ or the one by W. Richardson http://weblogg-ed.com/. These sites are known internationally for the quality of their thoughts about using blogs.
For those who want to go a step further, APOP offers continuing education courses on pedagogical uses of blogs such as “APOP-1C-02 Blogs: their educational potential within a context of responsible citizenship”. - Setting a Publication Date : The second step is to go to your course plan to identify when students will need to publish their thoughts or material. These moments can be determined by time period, such as every three weeks, or by goals such as publication of plans, reading journals, etc. Of course, these times can be official or informal. Furthermore, you can allow your students to publish as they wish. In this vein, tolerance is the order of the day as students publish material that is perhaps less on task and more personal as they familiarize themselves with the process of putting their thoughts online and working with others. These first entries will most likely not contribute much to the overall quality of thought but can foster a lasting community of learning within the group.
- Identifying an Operating Protocol : Are you taking a team oriented approach or not? Are you going to ask your students to make a minimum number of comments about classmates’ entries? Are you going to give the address of a group’s blog to other members of the class or retain these addresses for yourself only? It is important to note that forcing students to make peer comments does not always produce positive results. The quality of comments can be compromised. Furthermore, it seems that the act of formalizing ideas on-line does have an effect on learning. Finally, students in general do not like to be obliged to read or comment on classmates’ entries, but do appreciate visiting the blogs of their peers. It may therefore be useful to make a repertory of student blogs available to the class.
Classroom Protocols - Requiring Students to Create a Blog : It seems that imposing a particular tool on students or worse yet imposing a group blog is a mistake. The feeling of blog ownership is important. You can, however, suggest the tool (Blogger, WordPress ou Posterous), leaving the final choice open for each student to heighten student motivation.
- Explaining Blog Operation : As this will most likely be a first experience in the blogosphere for some of your students, take the time to explain the anatomy of a blog in class.
- Explaining Your Expectations : Students need to know what you expect of them on their blog. Give them publication deadlines, select team members (if there are teams) and even provide the questions and themes that could be helpful in their tasks. It might also be helpful to ask them to consider what elements they didn’t understand and what difficulties they encountered during the course of their learning.
- Validating the Publications of Your Students : To maximize interest and efficiency, the teacher should consult student blogs regularly to make constructive comments (remember the blog is public) or to simply stay informed of the progress of students. As well, the judicious use of RSS feeds greatly facilitates the surveillance that the teacher must perform with student blogs. RSS feeds will keep you informed of any new entry on your students’ blogs. Don’t hesitate to ask your students to consult a particularly interesting post of a classmate or to ask an outside source to make a comment of particular interest. Use the reflections published in your students’ blogs to stimulate discussion in class.
Note : If you need to communicate something confidential to your students, use old fashioned e-mail or a personal meeting.
A Final Report of the Blogging Experience
At the end of the semester, it is important to take stock as a group of the effect of blogging on the group’s learning experience. It is also important for the teacher to evaluate the use of blogs in their pedagogy. These exercises can result in modifications to future courses which could be changed to take further advantage of blogs’ usefulness in student learning. Notwithstanding the personal and less pertinent aspects of some entries, blogs open the classroom to the world and create a community of learning which can rapidly become rich and motivating.
Finally, it is important to note that the more the use of blogs is supervised, the less beneficial are the results. Furthermore, certain students will probably not appreciate the experience. You must ask yourself if it is imperative that everyone participate to the same degree. The principal objective must always be to advance student learning. As diaries have proved their value as has the teaching portfolio, the blog with an ever simpler operation, can be an extremely productive option.
Note: Don’t forget that blogging is a relatively labour intensive option for learners who must think about their processes and procedures. Comments from students about using blogs frequently reflect the effort expended in considering their methodology.
VARIATIONS
Considered Evaluation and a Community of Learning
Earlier, we presented the use of blogs in a project context. However, it is also possible to proceed in the same manner for a more traditional course. Asking students to consider what they haven’t understood well or to comment on readings, for example, would allow teachers to take advantage of the boost that self-reflection brings to the process of learning. A well-presented use of blogs can create new links among students during the course and because of the personal ownership of most blogs, this relation can continue throughout their studies.
The Teacher's Blog
The blog can also be used exclusively by the teacher to distribute content as a quick route to the Internet. The blog can contain texts, videos or images of interest for the course and its students. The teacher’s blog can allow students to interact with the teacher and other students outside of class hours which is its prime advantage. Once the teacher’s blog is up and running, the site can deliver material as diverse as addresses, RSS feeds and passwords to students. The teacher can take advantage of the easy operation of blogs to emphasize pertinent resources for students, ask them to react to a text or ask them to express their personal or team opinions on a theme or a work-study experience for example.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||
respecting certain conditions.
Comments by readersReact to this text
Wonderful Information on Blogs!
This information was very helpful to me. It has aided me in my Education Technology course assignment for gathering information on blogging because it answered my questions which were: Features of blogs, How it can work in teaching and learning and why is blogging effective. Thanking you for sharing your work, Respectfully yours, Deana Blossom.
Deana Blossom, Student / Teacher [2009-10-15]