Blogs in Education - just a passing fad?
The latest issue of MoodleZine has an interesting article on blogs.
From other blog entries and the Moodle forums I was aware the article would have a certain bias (or opinion). The article did however discuss some interesting ideas.
The article begins by suggesting that blogging in education will fade within the next 12 months, an interesting comment considering one of their other articles clearly provides evidence of steady growth in blog interest over three years.
I agree blogging will probably have a drop off when the honeymoon effect wears off and other technologies hit the spot light, but I doubt blogging will vanish off the radar. It will find its niche.
What really got my attention with this article was the comparison to other web technologies like journals and discussion boards. The idea that all three technologies were made up of the same basic components; genesis, input interface and feedback intrigued me.
So what is different, according to the article the only difference is the focus.
- Blogs focus on the most recent posts and feedback is related very specifically to that post, if someone goes off on a tangent it will be hard to follow.
- Journals have a focus on the overall insight of the entry and feedback is usually restricted to a teacher or small group of others.
- Discussion board’s focus is on the feedback. The initial post provokes a discussion and values others input.
I am still contemplating how this would work. Flexibility in a class room is important, however I believe having the structure of three distinct tools (environments) within a course would be less confusing and be more likely to promote sharing.
posted by Jason Plunkett @ 6:38 AM
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The article was a very interesting read and I think that the author hasn't quite understood the full deal behind blogs (or perhaps doesn't want to). I wonder about the value of a blog housed in a LMS like Moodle because it sort of defeats the personal ownership that a blog enables and certainly restricts the potential audience. I've yet to discover a Moodle (or any LMS based) blog to add to my feeds - I think that because it is a sheltered system, it would explain why the author complained in the comments below the article that his rss feed had never been touched. So he derides rss as being of limited value just because of that. I would venture that the real reason is that because it is hidden in a Moodle system, it is difficult to discover. Jason, you know more about Moodle than me - I've only played around with it for E-Learning week with the Sampler course - but it frustrates me that all of my content disappears into cyberspace when the course ends. On my blog, I can keep my content for as long as I wish, even transfer it from host to host. For me, adding a blog feature on Moodle is a bit like adding fluffy dice on a Monaro - it doesn't add anything to performance, the owner thinks it's cool and the best thing but it just annoys everyone else! BTW, I hope that blogs aren't on the wane in education already! You would be aware how few teachers we have blogging here in South Australia as it is - I think blogs will continue to evolve but until a tool comes along that adds more than blogs offer to the concept of networked learning, there is plenty of room for growth.
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Thanks for the response Graham, I am of the belief that an LMS should encourage personal ownership. I believe they are moving in the right direction with the My Moodle interface, this has already been encouraged with the use of forums etc. Maybe you are right, blogs are not the best tool for within Moodle as others will do a better job.
Your content should not disappear, I would guess this has occurred because you have used a playpen (or sandbox). I have reused courses in my Moodle environment a couple of times now, although the student will lose their information at the end of the course. In all reality the student information is never promoted as being permanently available.
With the Moodle blog feature it sits separate to the courses so in essence should be there indefinitely.
I am not sure they are the fluffy dice, although using them as Moodle would have you use them would be.
I can see an environment, possible set up with edublogs where students share their learning journey through their SACE Stage 2 ITS course. They could share frustrations, explain solutions to problems, explain how they have changes tactics etc. IF their “learning environment “– LMS allowed them to aggregate these feeds within a personalised space (which it now does) then the students could see what the others are up to and resolve their own issues before speaking to the teacher.
The student could then log onto Moodle and access their resources and discuss issues etc in the forums.
Time will tell whether blogs are a fad, I am fairly sure we are safe. To solve the problems with the limited number of people blogging in South Australia, we will need to address a few bigger problems first.
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