After posting on my blog for a little while, I took a step back and tried to to take an objective look at blogs and their usefulness in the classroom. I used the SWOT framework to guide my observations.
Strengths:
- Easy to build. Visual editor means that knowledge of HTML is not necessary.
- Security is good.
- User or other admins can control who reads the blog. With a bit of effort, readership can be changed so that only the class list can read the blog.
- Can control who contributes to the blog via posts.
- Can control comments via moderation.
- Spam comments are automatically filtered out.
- Can determine whether comments are enabled or not.
- Posts can only be edited by the author.
- Can embed content - videos and images - quite easily.
- New content can be added constantly.
Weaknesses:
- If comments are enabled, cannot control who comments on the blog. Can only moderate out undesirable comments after they are submitted. This can be mitigated if the readership is limited.
- If content is added too frequently, "reader overload" can occur (e.g. ten articles added in one day).
- If content is added infrequently, readers can lose interest.
- It is difficult to follow and keep track of multiple blogs.
- Blogs will only broadcast as far as your readership allows. It takes time and persistence if a large readership is to be built up, through frequent posting. As more people read and share your content (hopefully with linkbacks), it is then broadcast to a wider audience.
- Blogs are a great way to add your voice to the internet, but many others are trying to do the same thing. If the goal is to broadcast the content, the blogger has to contend with the "noise" of millions of other blogs that are clogging the arteries of the internet.
Opportunities:
- Blogger has a smartphone/tablet app and is easy to use from a mobile device. Students could post on the go, record observations and add photos on the spot. The raw information is transferred to Blogger either straight away over 3G or when wifi is in range. The student can then edit from a computer, fixing up spelling, grammar and formatting.
- Blogs are a great way to keep track of science experiments over time, e.g. growth of a bean sprout, weather conditions and readings (temperature, mm of rainfall, barometric pressure) each day over four weeks, and any other experiment that cannot be undertaken in one lesson, which requires multiple measurements to be taken over time.
Threats:
- As with all online activity, security is paramount when using any online ICT in the classroom. Passwords must be kept secure.
- Blogs require frequent updating, as opposed to a website, which is generally used to present a set amount of information (e.g. a journal compared to a one-off presentation). Students must be reminded to complete weekly reflections and/or posts in order to maintain their blog.
- Not all students may have access to a computer at home. This may impact their ability to keep up-to-date with the required journal entries.
- Potential for cyberbullying through hurtful comments.
Setup Considerations:
- Teacher will need to compile class list of blogs and add themselves as the admin. This requires each student's username and password.
- Each user must be individually added, and must be logged in to read your blog.
- Teacher will then also need to visit each individual blog and set up the limited readership.
- Teacher will need to moderate all blogs and take action on deliberately hurtful or abusive comments.
- An RSS aggregator is essential for keeping track of multiple blogs, especially for a teacher trying to keep track of a whole class-list of 20-30 blogs. Using the aggregator, it is possible to categorize and keep track of multiple class lists of blogs if necessary. It will monitor blogs from a central point and will flag a blog when new content is posted. I've been using Google Reader until now, but since it's shutdown was announced for July, I switched to Feedly. Feedly has it's own Android, iPhone and Kindle apps, and is native to Chrome. It's also a far nicer layout and has better features than Reader.
Some blog platforms have the ability to be updated from a mobile device. Photos can be taken and automatically added to a post, and the posts added right then and there using the 3G mobile network. Otherwise they can be stored and uploaded when a wifi hotspot is in range. This is useful when students may be on a field trip or are asked to take photos of places of interest in their community.
After analysing the blog as a digital tool, it was found that there were significant benefits in using blogs for learning. In a simple form, some classes set up a blog to serve as a newsletter-style bulletin, showcasing different class activities and events that were participated in during the year. One example shows a teacher using a blog as a part of a website in order to set homework tasks and reminders about other activities.
Other classes take a different approach, using tags (Blogger calls them labels) to recognize individual students' contributions to the blog. Multiple tags can be assigned to one article, where groupwork or whole class work was documented. This effectively gives each student an individual e-portfolio to showcase their work - stories, slideshows, and other activities.
Blogs can be used as a way of documenting science experiments with observations over time, or as a journal for visual art, or as a way of keeping a record of projects that are in progress.
Students can use whatever media they like to update the blog, depending on their learning style. They may be asked to used a range of technologies to record and share their findings - text, photos, video or audio clips - but because of their learning style, they may prefer one particular method.
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