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Educational Uses for Blogs

There are a variety of educational uses for blogs for both teachers and students:

• Standard class web page replacement – Blogs can be used to replace standard web pages that instructors have been creating for their classes. These instructor blogs can contain class times, rules, assignments, announcements, suggested readings, and exercises.
• Internet links – A blog can be used to become a collection of Internet links to sites that relate to a course topic. These can be maintained in teacher and student blogs. Students can add to the list as time goes on. These links can have short essays (teacher or student written) accompanying them that describe their importance.
• Organizer for in-class discussion – Students can be asked to create blogs relating to course topics and in-class discussions. Students can get to know one another better by reading and commenting on each other's blogs.
• Summaries of readings – Blogs can be used to provide summaries of course-related readings, which can be contributed to by the class.
• Student reading summaries – Students can read part of a book and post a short ( two paragraph) summary in a blog (Downes, 2004).
• Informational resources – Students can stay abreast of current information on a topic by visiting blogs of experts in a field. They can comment on the blogs or ask questions, or create a blog of their own based on what they are learning from the experts and link their blog to the blogs of experts.
• Management systems – Teachers, schools, and school districts are using blogs as an information management tool. Some are using blogs to share daily outcomes, upcoming activities/units, or to communicate with parents. The blogs can contain such items as homework, spelling words, handouts, reminders, and permission forms, to name a few.
• Portfolios – As new content is posted, most blogging software automatically archives older posts in a blog. Thus, a student could create a portfolio of his/her accomplishments in a given course to document his/her growth over time. The fact that the blog can contain text, images, and multimedia items makes it a great way to construct a portfolio.
• Collaboration – Students can connect with similar students taking a similar class across the country or in some other part of the world by reading and commenting on each other's class-related blog.
• Electronic filing cabinet – When students receive emails with good class-related links, images, or other information, they can add the information to their class-related blogs for safe-keeping rather than taking a chance on losing the information because their email was deleted or otherwise lost.
• Enhanced reading – Students can create blogs where they list information, images, links, etc., related to items they are reading in class to enhance the reading experience of all class members as well as the teacher
• Enhancing literacy/language discussion – Some teachers use blogs to conduct online literacy circles, art reviews with feedback, and article discussions. Blogs could also be used to continue and extend in-class discussions. (Mustangblog, 2005)
• News ticker – Students can find sites that relate to their blog and add an aggregator to immediately get the latest posts related to their course topic.
• Reflective tool – Students can use their blogs to reflect on what they are learning each day in a class, which is basically like keeping a journal for the class. They can read each others blogs to get other points of view and/or understandings.

References

Downes, Stephen.(2004, Sepember/October). "Educational Blogging," Educause Review, 9(5). Retrieved February 22, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu.pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp

"Instructional Uses of Weblogs." (2005, Februrary 23). Retrieved February 22, 2006, from http://mustangblog.typepad.com/educationalweblogs/instructional_uses_of_weblogs/index.html

Ideas for Using Wikis in Your Classroom

Uses

There are many educational uses for wikis. Below is a list of sample ideas that you may be able to use, or that may give you ideas for other applications.

• Class hot lists – A class can maintain a wiki that contains hot lists that point out valuable course resources.
• Frequently asked questions – A class tracks frequently asked questions on a topic they are studying and creates a list of those questions with corresponding best answers. They could begin as real questions asked by class members that are answered by others in the class.
• Help pages – A class anticipates problems that others may have with a subject and creates a resource that would help someone taking a class. It might contain problem-solving suggestions, techniques, tips, etc.
• Puzzles – Complex puzzles or problems could be posted on the wiki and the class members can contribute to the solution. Students can read what others have done so far and change or add to it.
• Student advice pages – A class can develop a website that gives advice or suggestions to others about to take a class. It can be continued from year to year.
• Collaborative writing – Groups of students working on a common experiment or project could collaboratively write a paper or report.
• Collaborative glossary – Groups of students could collaboratively write a glossary of terms related to a course or topic.
• Close reading – A teacher can post text for students to read, reflect on, and analyze. Students can identify portions of the text that they want to explore or discuss and can link to additional information on it.
• Exam reviews – Practice problems and/or questions are posted on the wiki. Students can post their answers/solutions and the class can then comment on, critique, or correct them. Class members could also post additional representative problems or questions of their own for all to benefit from.
• Expert reviews – Student projects are posted on the wiki and experts are asked to evaluate them and make comments on the work Students can also engage the experts in discussion on the projects (Georgia Tech, 2000).
• Spaces for brainstorming – Wikis can be used as spaces where brainstorming on a course topic can be done.
• Agenda building – If a teacher holds meetings with his/her class, the agenda can be built in a wiki. An initial agenda can be created with changes or additions made by members of the class.
• Reference lists and outlines – Students and the teacher can collaboratively build an outline and reference list for a topic, chapter, or unit they are engaged in (Lamb, 2004).
• Knowledge bank – A topic is chosen and a website is created, then each student does research and adds what he/she has learned about the topic.
• Novels – A novel of a specific type can be assigned to the class. The class members can collaboratively write it and then the class can discuss the results.
• Directory of helpful websites – Students can list websites related to a subject that have been helpful to them.
• Letter or statement – If the class wishes to express its thoughts or feelings on a topic to a school or government official, they could work collaboratively to write it via a wiki.
• Build a textbook – A teacher could build his/her own textbook for a course by developing a wiki and adding to the textbook as the class progresses through the course. Students can add the textbook as well, with the teacher serving as quality control. This can continue and be used from year to year (Barton, 2004).

Tips and Suggestions

There a number of things you can do to ensure a greater chance of success in any application you may attempt with wikis.

• Make assignments as open ended as possible to give students the highest degree of choice and control as possible.
• Do what you can to get some students involved. Once students see that other students are involved, they may be more willing to participate.
• If lack of Internet access at home is a problem, provide some time in class for the project (Kairosnews, 2004).
• Have students identify their work so that it can be tracked.
• Depending on the project, you may want to have your students do more adding or modifying than deleting.
• Confine the wiki project to one topic or purpose.
• The main role of the teacher is to establish the context of the assignment and to set it up so that it will be engaging to the student. The more autonomy the students have, the more successful the wiki will be (Lamb, 2004).

References

"A Catalog of CoWeb Uses" – Collaborative Software Lab, College of Computing, Georgia Tech, November 2, 2000 – retrieved from ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gvu/tr/2000/00-19.pdf 3/1/06

Lamb, Brian. (2004). "Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not," Educause Review, 39(5). Retrieved February 24, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0452.asp?bhcp=1

Barton, Mat. "Embrace the Wiki Way!" Retrieved March 1, 2006, from http://www.mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=4

"My Brilliant Failure: Wikis in the Classroom," Kairosnews. Retrieved February 22, 2006, from http://kairosnews.org/node/3794?PHPSESSID=0136ed96df6175e3fa2eba743ea03de8

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