Welcome to the TIP Blog

This blog will illustrate some of the features of Blogging and raise issues regarding blogging for educational purposes.

Simply put, a Blog is a form of interactive Web-based technology that allows users to post information and comment on such posts. It is a part of Web 2.0 technology, or what can be termed the Read/Write Web. Web 1.0 technology is primarily presentational: web pages are static and are maintained by a webmaster who supplies and formats the information. On the Read/Write web anyone can provide and respond or react to information, thoughts, ideas, videos, sounds and images.

Web 2.0 technologies involve such things as online catalogs, particularly those like amazon that allow users to post reviews, video posting sites such as YouTube, where users can post videos and can comment textually or in video form on other videos, podcasting sites and services, online photo storage sites, online photo editing sites, wikis, and blogs.

Characteristic of blogs is the regular posting of content relating to a particular topic. The blog author posts a message (textual, visual, aural), and the blog allows for readers of this message to comment on the message and on one another's comments. Generally, blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order -- most recent posts appear first on the blog page. Often a blog will present links to earlier posts and discussions, it may link to other blogs or other web sites, and may present several different options for reader interaction. Finally, the beauty of blogs is that they can be syndicated, or automatically distributed to subscribers. Every time there is a new post on a blog that I subscribe to, I can know about that post without having to navigate to the blog site. I can keep a list of blogs that I want to monitor and access this list of all these blogs in one central place.

One general conception of a blog is as an online journal. Individuals set up a blog to tell the world what they have been doing and what they are thinking. Blogs have been used to post photographs and narratives of one's experiences. I have two former students who are currently spending the year in Germany who regularly write about their experiences and post photos for all their friends and acquaintances to see. It is a form of letter writing with a wide audience.

Yet blogs can and are used for more purposes. Most news organizations now publish their articles in the form of blogs. Organizations that present news relating to particular issues organize their essays in blog form, allowing for and encouraging reader responses. YouTube is in essence a loosely organized video blog site. I use a blog to keep my 8-10 language lab assistants current with what transpires in the lab on a daily basis.

Most effective blogs, however, share certain characteristics. They are not simply a loose stream of consciousness, but rather organized thoughts and ideas. Like research papers, blog authors make use of resources and work with these resources to express themselves. Such blog posts are often means of digesting these resources and developing and supporting a thesis. As such, they lead beyond themselves, pointing directly to primary sources on the web by means of links, allowing readers to inspect this information. Finally, they encourage reader reaction and therefore interaction.

Of all the above, can you see any use in blogs in the curriculum? Firstly, I ask from a teaching perspective. What use can we as teachers put to the blog technology? Secondly, what about students? How might the use of blogs in the curriculum enhance their learning -- not just from the point of view of students as readers of blogs, but that of students as creators and writers of blogs?