This seems to be happening more and more, me being late to the party on stuff, but here’s another effort on the part of the edblogging community that deserves some attention. Steve Hargadon, who is just doing all sorts of cool things involving open source software and recycling computers and other good and noble things, put together the SupportBlogging! wiki as a response to the dopey DOPA legislation that’s going through Congress. Here’s the mission:
“Educational Blogging” is a positive, tranformational technology that is often confused with “Social Networking” sites like MySpace.com. While there are similarities in the web technologies used for blogging and social networking sites, they serve different purposes. The current backlash against social networking sites has the potential to overshadow the benefits of educational blogging. Hopefully, this site will provide materials for decision-makers as they determine policies for their schools and districts that would impact the use of educational blogging or potentially restrict access to sites that provide blogging services.
The site already has all sorts of great resources, and it looks like a great start at collecting the ideas and best practices of the community.
BTW, Steve’s also set up a “Blogs, Wikis, and the Read/Write Web” Education Booth at NECC, which (OMG) is less than a month away!
7 Comments
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Are you kidding? The party hasn’t started until you arrive! (lol)
Best wishes and kudos on your recent work,
Miguel Guhlin
I think this is the sign of a much more systemic problem where policy makers are making big decisions with only a small amount of information. I wonder how this would affect education podcasts like mine. My feed is based off of a blog.
I am currently taking a course that has introduced to me to this new trend of blogging. I never knew all this was out here. So much information in which I can go out and find, read and then talk about. I have fallen for blogging!
I also am taking EDU 375 and blogging is so much fun. I really like it and love that I can use it when I teach. Now I know about wiki’s too and I can use that for my teaching and choreography as well. It is truly great and class is exciting learning all these new technologies!
I also support blogging for higher education. I don’t think it is suitable for students in K-12. I don’t know much about security but it seems to me that anyone can see blogs and this is not safe for our children. I am a pre service teacher but I don’t know if I will use blogging. I can see using discussion boards that you have to subscribe to. This way not just anyone can look at the comments. I can also see using chat. Now the problem is not all children have access to the internet. Bloggin, discussion boards, and chat can all cause a digital divide between the students who have internet and those who do not. This is a current problem and as far as I can see, it does not have an answer.
Integrating blogging in education is fun and interesting. Teaching students how to respond to other students blogs, creating their own posts, or even their own blogs is an exciting experience. This is a different way that teachers can incorporate technology effectively in the classroom and encourage critical thinking.
I think that blogging is a great educational tool. I will definitely incorporate weblogs into my classroom. There are ways that you can make blogging safe for all children. I think by not introducing them to this emerging technology only holds them back, and in the long run is not beneficial to them.