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Blogs

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What's a blog? plog? etc?? Educause featured an article on 7 things you should know about blogs in Aug 2005. I recorded the url here http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=7495&bhcp=1 but on revisiting in Feb 2007 I find that you can't actually get the fact sheets on any of the topics. So you can't see, without logging in, the 7 things that Educause found significant about blogs in Aug 2005. However, you can get an excellent list here of what was hot each month in educational technology and then look the topics up in Wikipedia. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs (and a Plog, according to Wikipedia, could be a 'project blog' or a 'picture log' http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plog you wouldn't find that out from Educause ;-)

Graham Davies writes in July 2007: "The archives of this Flashmeeting videoconference on blogging, podcasting and digital video show you what language teachers in secondary education in the UK are doing in these areas. The conference was set up by Joe Dale: http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/fm/fmm.php?pwd=8d1d59-1723

Talking Blogs -

• Blogger supports voice, says EHS, "and has Talkr built in and will convert your text to a friendly voice, though it sometimes takes a couple of days to show up. I believe you have to register with Talkr and create the link to your blog to get the service started. Still seems a bit experimental, but you can try it at my blog at http://ehansonsmith.blogspot.com"

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Blog Providers

• http://www.21publish.com
• http://www.buzznet.com
  Vance's User's Guide: http://webpres2005.buzznet.com/user/?id=1013951
• http://www.livejournal.com
  Dafne Gonzalez has created a tutorial for her students for LiveJournal. "I really like this blog. If you are interested this is it: http://daf4.free.fr/blogs/creating_a_blog_in_live_journal.htm"
• Wordpress http://www.wordpress.com
• http://www.blogger.com
  See Vance's instructions on:

• How to start a blog at Blogger: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/blogger_tutorial.htm
• How to insert links and pictures in the template: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/pi/computing2/blogwork/blog_template.htm
• Vance's presentations on Blogs Away where online participants were assisted in starting their own blogs from a distance, April 2005
  • I gave an online 2-part workshop at The Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi UAE Tactile Tasks and Technical Tips Event for the Learner Independence and IT SIGs of TESOL Arabia April 14 in Abu Dhabi. The presentation is at: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/arabia/tttt2005/blogging_now.htm or http://tinyurl.com/3jc5o. The workshop was in two 1 hour blocks starting around 05:00 GMT . The two parts were on starting blogs, and the second hour got into what to do with them.
  • Sat April 30 I was invited to address an audience virtually at the Qatar Teachers English Network Conference (QTEN) conference in Doha, Qatar on Blogging in online communities of practice: Impact on language learning and teacher professional development. This workshop guided participants in creating and developing their own blog sites, and illustrated ways that blogs can be configured to create authentic, interactive, communicative, reflective, creative, and motivating learning environments that engage students and provide a means for teachers to further their ongoing professional development. http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/papers/qten2005/vancestevens2005qten.htm or http://tinyurl.com/9pqd7. The session was recorded and is here: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=805285
• Blogging featured as part of the Webheads tutorial on community formation at: http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/week5.htm#blogs

Elder Bob recommends you interface with your blog using: http://wbloggar.com/

Some blogs you might want to check out

• Elderbob Brannan; e.g. http://elderboblog.typepad.com/ontheroad/2005/09/keep_it_simple_.html
• Barbara Dieu's blog of student publications at http://www.dekita.org
• Stephen Downes's Stephen's Web at http://www.downes.ca/
• Jim Duber announced in Oct 2002 his blog on Computer Assisted Language Learning, "Jim Duber on CALL" at: http://www.duber.com/oncall/ . At the time there were demonstrations of streaming video via Flash MX and links to recent articles on CALL-related topics.
• 'incorporated subversion' is the title of James Farmer's Online Education Weblog, great set of bibliographic references on blogs from mid-July 2004: http://radio.weblogs.com/0120501/2004/07/15.html#a756
• Dafne Gonzales
• Vance's learning community blog at: http://webpres2005.buzznet.com

Here are a number of references on blogging

• Teresa Almeida d'Eça has created a separate "Blogs" section in her WiA Index pages: http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/wia-index2.htm#blogs There is also a list here of blogs by Webheads, examples of a great variety of ways that this set of language learning practioners uses blogs. See also Teresa's OLE page. http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/online-learning-environments.htm (click Blogs)
• Gladys Baya, Claudia Bellusci, Carla Arena, and Erika Cruvinel created a wiki documenting their Jan 15 and Feb 25, 2007 EVO Session Blogging for Beginners, http://bloggingforbeginners.pbwiki.com/
• Curt Bonk has a list of blogging resources on this page: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/links.htm
• James Simpson suggests "Into the blogosphere" http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ ; John Hibbs responded http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/the_spirit_of_paulo_freire.html
• Campbell, Aaron Patric. (2003). Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes. Internet TESL Journal Vol. IX, No. 2, February 2003, http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html. Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to introduce three ways that weblogs can be used to support ESL classroom learning. After defining what a weblog is, I will proceed to show how weblogs can be put into immediate use in the ESL classroom by means of three distinct types: the tutor weblog, learner weblog, and class weblog. I will also mention the software available for creating and maintaining weblogs.
• Barbara Dieu has written a great little webooklet on Blogging and Presence Online (Feb 2004). At one time a must-read for teachers both novice and those wanting to know more about the potential of blogs and how they can enhance language learning, it used to be at http://members.tripod.com/the_english_dept/blog04/ (however I think Bee has removed it, because it has gone out of date). However, you can join Bee's YahooGroup at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblogging/. Apropos to that, Bee points out: "More resources and readings on blogging can be found in the wiki opened for the Evo 05 weblogging workshop, which all webheads and teachers are invited to consult.(and why not collaborate by adding your own to this common open area). http://www.opensource.idv.tw/wiki/index.php/Main_Page "
• Jeff Felix, Superintendent of Bonsall Union School District in Bonsall, CA. is a candidate for the Ed.D. in the Joint Doctoral program in educational leadership at the University of California San Diego, CalState University San Marcos, and San Diego State University researching the phenomenon of blogging and, in particular, blogging in the classroom, hoping to help other teachers to better understand the powerful benefits of blogging with their students. Find his blog at http://suptfelix.blogspot.com/
• Ferdig, Richard E., and Kaye D. Trammell. (2004). Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'. T.H.E. Journal (February or March issue); retrieved March 18, 2004 from: http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4677.cfm?kw=&gw=
• An excellent overview: Blogging in TESL by Ishbel Galloway, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada - presented at the TESOL 2005 Convention in San Antonio: http://www.sfu.ca/~igallowa/blogging/
• John Hibbs has some pointers to some interesting articles on blogs at the Blogging Page for Global Learn Day, http://bfranklin.edu/blog/
• Learning Technology, a publication of IEEE Computer Society, had a special issue on “Blogging as an Educational Technology” Oct 2006: http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/issues/october2006/
• DebraHo (alias at Tapped In) reports that she is working with blogs to promote reflective learning - "in my case, of teachers, mainly in-service, mostly pursuing their Masters in Education. I am particularly intersted in how the use of blogs can help to establish and maintain communities - both among learners and among teachers. See my teaching blog at: http://lifentheuniverse.blogspot.com/ Here I also have links to my students' logs - both past and present - & they are now using blogs in their teaching too."
• Bob Palmer has a very nice slide show on getting stated (and continuing) with Blogger here: http://www.jalthokkaido.net/palmer/blogging101a.ppt
• Martin Röll. Distributed KM - Improving Knowledge Workers' Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing. Paper presented to BlogTalk 2.0, "The European Conference on Weblogs", Vienna, July 5th and 6th 2004. http://www.roell.net/publikationen/distributedkm.shtml
• Renata Suzuki. (2004). Diaries as introspective research tools: From Ashton-Warner to Blogs. TESL-EJ Vol 8 #1, June: On the Internet column. Retrieved April 14, 2004 from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej29/int.html.
• There is a Yahoo Group for Blogging that you can join at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/esl_efl_blogs/. You can read the messages at the site without being a member.
• There is a resource page on blogs at: http://anvil.gsu.edu/NECC2004/. One of the postings there at http://anvil.gsu.edu/NECC2004/stories/storyReader$13 entitled 'What are the possibilities for weblogs in education?' gives a few dozen ways that teachers and students can use blogs effectively.

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WIKIS

Wikis are software which allow multiple users, with or without password, to write on a wiki page. When one user is writing, the page is locked to others. This can be done with our without password (depending on how the administrator set it up; Wikipedia requires none, for example). Wikis always have ways of reverting to previous states in case of need to correct information. Wikis are sometimes spammed and vandalized, but in aggregate, they appear to be excellent ways for communities to communicate their voices and disseminate information at a grass roots level, with multiple users critiquing each other, so that the point of view acknowledged by the community emerges. For an amusing explanation see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Aside from Wikipedia, the classic instance of a global wiki knowledge repository, there is also a Wiki textbook movement, and many sources of wikibooks in general:

• Wikibooks.org: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
• Wikibooks South African Curriculum project: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/South_African_Curriculum
• Wikipedia on Wikibooks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks

Hosts for wikis:

• Some free forum hosting: phpbb at http://www.forumsplace.com/
• My favorite, easy as a peanut butter sandwich: http://www.pbwiki.com
• I became aware of this one in Aug 2006: http://www.kwiki.org/
• Worldbridges uses MediaWiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
• Which Open Source Wiki Works For You? by Shlomi Fish 11/04/2004 http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/04/which_wiki.html

Examples of wikis used for collaborative teaching and professional development:

• The classic, amazing Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/
• Worldbridges has a great example of using wikis for teacher development in ed tech / IT: http://www.edtechtalk.com/wiki/
• Dafne's Becoming a Webhead wiki: http://baw-06.pbwiki.com/
• Moodle for Webheads student / teacher wikis: http://moodle4webheads.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
• Wikiversity: http://en.wikiversity.org - a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Wikiversity is a multidimensional social organization dedicated to learning, teaching, research and service. Its primary goals are to: * Create and host free content, multimedia learning materials, resources, and curricula for all age groups in all languages * Develop collaborative learning projects and communities around these materials

Ask not what your wiki can do for you, but what you can do for your wiki: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsFU3sAlPx4

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VLOGS

There's an easily readable/watchable guide on how to set up a video blog for free, here: http://freevlog.org/tutorial/

Here are some places where you can store video:

• BlipTV - http://blip.tv/ - has good servers, fast uploads (I've tested up to 100 megabytes). Assigns a URL to your upload with brings up a page that plays your video, fast streaming playback in a nice interface
• Blogcheese - http://www.blogcheese.com/ - an actual video blog site (e.g. http://www.blogcheese.com/yaodong/?p=1)
• Buzznet - http://www.buzznet.com/video/ - from the providers of the original photoblog site
• Flixn: http://flixn.com/
• Google video - http://video.google.com/ - I had trouble with timeouts uploading a 100 megabyte file, but this one generates the EMBED code that allows you to play your video on your web page. The URL in that code plays the video faster from the Google site.
• HelloDeo: http://hellodeo.com/
• YouTube, now owned by Google - http://www.youtube.com/ - store and play your video here, and see what others have done.

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RSS

One very useful feature of blogs is that they are syndicated and shared via RSS streams. To make this work you need the URL of the stream you wish to access and then an aggragator to collect the streams and feed them to you. I have moved my RSS materials to a new location: http://www.vancestevens.com/rss_edu.htm

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Open Source in general

The Open Source software model is replacing the Enterprise model in many areas of software development, particularly those involving the most users. Thomas Freedman for example, describes how IBM was forced to work with Apache developers (and contribute to the community) because they could not compete with open source developers in creating a superior product, and as a result IBM server software is now built on the Apache kernel. Here are some resources as I have time to record them here ....

• Venny Su has an article in the TESL-EJ entitled An Open Source Portal for Educators http://tesl-ej.org/ej33/int.html, June, 2005
• For advanced users, there is a Blog Software Breakdown: examination and comparison of software for setting up blogs on your own server, at http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm

Copyright 2007 by Vance Stevens
under Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

February 2, 2007

Mirrors: This page is available at:

• http://www.vancestevens.com/blogs.htm
• http://www.geocities.com/vance_stevens/blogs.htm
• http://www.prof2000.pt/users/vstevens/blogs.htm