How NOT to use blogs in education
Update: You can now find part II, how you SHOULD use blogs in education, here.
I thought I’d summarise a paper (Blogs @ Anywhere: High fidelity online communication) that I’m hoping to have accepted for ASCILITE 2005 here in two posts offering quick summaries of how I think you should & shouldn’t try to use blogs in education. If you’re into depth then you might prefer the paper, otherwise read on:
Never never approach blogs as discussion boards, listservs or learning management systems: Almost invariably the first thing people do when encountering new technologies is to try and get it to do what the technologies they are used to do and this is no exception when it comes to blogs.
Group blogs are a bad idea and don’t work: Sure there’s a place for collaborative/ group blogs but that place is not in education. Blogs work well for individuals… they are tools of centred communication and pretty far removed from community management systems like Drupal. Just don’t go there!
Don’t try and force blogging into something else: Blogging suits highly customisable, individual, owned and fiercely flexible tools like WordPress. You can try and fit blogs into other systems such as Moodle, Drupal or Tiki but you’re not going to do well because the entire centralised philosophy of these systems is utterly opposed to that of successful blogging platforms
Ignore RSS at your peril: Probably the biggest mistake that adopters tend to make is to ignore RSS or just through it a casting glance. The problem is that these people aren’t bloggers and just don’t understand. Without RSS blogs would pretty much just be extensions of geocities pages. Your learners are NEVER going to surf each others sites everyday and the majority of them won’t even go to that funky web-based aggregator you set-up.
Any more really bad ideas you could add?
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If you’re setting up blogs for people, don’t be frustrated when they don’t use them. I’ve set up a dozen blogs for other folks, and the adoption rate is pretty low so far. The worst thing you can do is to mandate blog authorship. Show your prospective blogging participants some good example sites and open some discussion as to what is and what isn’t good blogging material. If you there’s no question in your mind that blogging is the future, and that we’ll all be bloggers some day, they’ll get it sooner or later.
Perhaps this might interest you –> http://www.toddseal.com/rodin/entries.php?id=8
A teacher’s blogging assignments for his freshman english class
I find the summary good. You’ve pulled out the main lessons. I’d like to see more on the group blogs thing. Your insights there and in wikis confirm some suspicions I have had. Your advantage is that you are pulling across multiple studies.
Bud
Is there a way you can use blogs in eduction………….
I’m curious about the specific reasons against a group blog. I work with a group of Librarians and academics in the field of Humanities Computing on a joint venture. We are planning to set up an academic blog of sorts where we can all post announcements and information of relevance to one another and unforeseeable passers-by. To me it seems like an ideal technology for our needs. You write emphatically against using blogs in this way, but I don’t see the rationale behind the conclusion.
By chance, by academic blog do you mean something in the classroom or something used by students?
Thanks for the comments / links / additions people!
Duane, unless your group is particularly RSS savvy, I think that what you need is a listserv / Yahoo groups. Announcements need to go to people and it doesn’t sound like they’d hold much value in a broader sense (I could of course be totally wrong there).
Blogs are centred on individuals… http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=54
I’m referring more here to blogs for teaching and learning, but I think that your perspective is a valuable and relevant one to the discussion.
Great post and I agree with most of what you say. But…
If you’ve got a good teacher and motivator behind the project, then group blogs are just about the best thing since sliced bread. I’ve set up group blogs at the collegiate and university levels for a wide range of subjects, and both students and teachers love the diversity and flow of information that occurs when a discussion is opened on a topic. Then there’s the added bonus of students answering each other’s questions (monitored by the teacher for accuracy), and sub-groups working on collaborative documents. And Drupal? Yes, it’s a CMS… but it’s also easily configured as an incredible group blogging system.
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I’ll agree on this for Moodle and Tiki, but for Drupal, again… this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The granular access permissions and total configurability – while confusing for the novice – permits a thoroughly decentralised, democratic setup – or a centralised dictatorship. Drupal has been and will continue to be used as a successful group blogging platform.
Hmmmm… yes you can get people communicating using group blogs, they will probably even enjoy it, but you’d be better off using Drupal as a community management system wouldn’t you?
For me, to steal a phrase from Greg Ritter, group blogging is like hammering nails with a saw… novelty value high, but practically, you’re probably better off with community tools.
As for Drupal… come on, allowing people to select from pre-installed themes is hardly decentralised, when they are totally individually editable, configurable (plugins etc.), exportable / importable and as good a systems as half of the blogging tools out there then I’ll come to the party.
A Drupal install for each user = very good… everyone in one Drupal environment = not so hot.
More on that here: http://incsub.org/blog/2005/multi-user-weblogging
Are there any really good examples of learners using blogs in Drupal environments over the course of more than one semester… or for that fact anyone really developing a successful / extended over time blog as part of a Drupal environment?
I haven’t seen it work myself.
Hi all,
I was interested in the comment about the group blogging.
In Cool Running blogs the individual ones fair the best.
I have developed one for Geography teachers
http://www.incsub.org/wpmu/gtansw/
and find it hard to generate any interest to get comments let alone postings. In fact it has I suspect started a bit of competition with those who use a related Yahoo Group and do not see the value (yet) of jumping across to blogging.
Cheers Plu
I use a group blog with a postgraduate course that I teach. Aspects of the course are fairly self-directed. I find the blog to be a brilliant way to encourage the students to share with each other what they are learning in their individual projects. It makes the course more interesting for them and for me as well. The blog has a central theme and the students are requirted to make one post, but that is enough to get the more enthusiastic students posting on their own. It is exciting to see enthusiasm building on enthusiasm.
This may not fit your idea of what a blog should be, but I have found it to be a very good use of a group blog.
Themes? I don’t understand… what does any of this have to do with themes? We’re talking e-learning, group collaboration and virtual classroom – all of which have corresponding setups in Drupal, which is also replete with plugin (‘modules’ they call ‘em). Import / Export? No problem. As a stand-alone, single-user blogging system, I’ll agree with you that it’s not that great… but as an academic group blog or collaborative community system, I’ve seen it work wonders.
So whether or not you’ll ‘come to the party’, the party’s already begun.
The contrary is true. The whole point of multi-user is to get everyone involved together. Whether this is Drupal, Moodle, Clay Tablets, etc. That’s the advantage that community / group blogging has over a simple, single-user, ‘lecture’ blog (although those have their place too).
Yes, you’ll find some here. The work I’ve done for McGill, while not public, will also be published soon.
I have.
Just because you’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…
Cheers,
Steve
“e-learning, group collaboration and virtual classroom” are three of my least favourite words.
I think we’re coming at this from different worlds… I’m of the world that says in order to be part of a community you need to be able to establish and project an identity… personal presence if you will. Drupal allows you to, to a degree, develop an identity in a particular space, if you will it’s a bit like being part of a church and your identity being so bound up in that environment that you don’t have much of one outside of it.
Yes, of course you can have a discussion there, you can get people collaborating and it can be a great hub for all sorts of activities (especially OSS ones, groups with particular focus etc.) but I strongly believe that in order for us to effectively participate in multiple communities, communication and identity needs to be centred on the individual and not the group.
I’m not saying that Drupal has no use, it has lots and I’ve used it in a number of different contexts pretty and very successfully.
What I am saying is that blogs are more than just spaces for writing, they are the development of digital identities (and I think you got the wrong end of what I was saying about Drupal… I *do* think it’s a very powerful tool for an individual) of digital representations of ourselves from which we are able to engage ion other communities… quite possibly / definitely incorporating elements of tools like Drupal… but most certainly not stemming out of it.
I have spent an awful lot of time exploring, examining, researching and looking into online education (I’m a lecturer in education design in my other life) and while you can do some ‘OK’ work using Drupal / other CMSs over a semester – certainly better than BB or WebCT – and you can use it even more effectively for non-time limited interest groups and projects, I just don’t reckon that, as a multi-user blogging platform it will work out.
Sure I could be wrong, I frequently am, and it’s just an opinion but do I think I’m onto something here.
To quote Robert Paterson: “How can we have a relationship with another when we have lost the core relationship with our own selves?”
(oh, and themes do matter… believe me!)
They’re three of my favorite.
I also think we’re coming at this from different angles. As important as identity and the concept of the ‘personal space’ are, education is – and will continue to be – a collaborative, group effort. Since one-to-one relationships between educators and each student in the classroom, the living conversation that we’ve been creating using different systems (including Drupal, among others) in classrooms and academic departments have permitted us to take knowledge building from the ‘bird-feeding-birdie’ approach to something more akin to a hive of bees.
Specifically, how can you create identities in other systems that you can’t do in Drupal?
Don’t get me wrong – Drupal is not a panacea for anything. I use a suite of tools for different uses, and in many cases Drupal is either overkill or inappropriate. The reason I keep coming back to it (and writing these boring, lengthy comments
) is that I have precisely seen these digital representations evolve and collaborate in an educational / academic setting evolve from systems I’ve created based on Drupal. – and Wordpress, and Moodle, and MovableType, and Mambo, and…
I think we do very similar work, albeit with very different approaches. Any CMS, blogging system, etc. can be configured / hacked / maimed to be anything you want it to be. The issue I had with your original post is this: contrary to what you’ve stated in your post, of the many tools I use (pretty much all open-source), I’ve found that Drupal can a) be used as group blog which is not a bad idea and which does work,and b) Drupal has as many blog-specific features as any ‘blogging-only’ package, and its philosophy is anything but centralised – it’s easily geared to be a top-notch blogging platform – group or not.
I don’t think it’s a question of right or wrong, or good or bad. Your experience with Drupal and with education in general has led you to these conclusions, and I’m not trying to dispute the way you do things. I’m just trying to point out that two of your blanket statements in your post are factually inaccurate, because I’ve seen them disproven, group blogs can work, and Drupal is nowhere near as centralised as you might have found.
Other than that, I agree with your point about RSS.
Cheers,
Steve
*typo:
should read:
“Since one-to-one relationships between educators and each student in the classroom are impossible”.
Interesting comments, but they seem to depend on a rather specific and exclusive definition of “blog”. I prefer to stick to the idea that a “blog” (i.e. weblog) is a collection of individual articles or “posts” organised primarily by time. You can do this with many different tools, you can do this in groups or as individuals, and you can do it for almost any purpose you want. If it is wrong to define new technologies in terms of what went before, it is also wrong to define a new technology too tightly too quickly – it becomes what people choose to use it for, not what someone thinks it should be.
Like any activity, blogging is educational when it helps people learn. I think there are many more kinds of blogging that help people learn than you would suggest.
Heh, it’s interesting that my considered, balanced and referenced posting of the paper didn’t get much discussion at all… whereas blanket statements get me the best conversations.
Bugger, am I becoming a a shock-blog
Thanks Chris… [places shock hat on]… successful blogs are individual blogs… successful group blogs are more like zines.
I think your broadside at group blogs having little value in education needs to be substantiated because I have found meritorious use with directed activities that culminate in contributions to a group weblog.
Hi Bernie, have a look here for some substantiation / theory: http://incsub.org/blog/2005/blogs-anywhere-high-fidelity-online-communication
Especially Krause (2004):
“or Krause (2004) the experience of using blogs in a graduate seminar called “Rhetoric and Culture of Cyberspace” made him wonder if:
“it is advisable or even possible to see blogs as a collaborative or especially “interactive” writing environments… I’ve come to believe we shouldn’t substitute blogs for other electronic writing tools that foster discussion and interactive writing, particularly email lists, commonly known as ‘listservs” (Krause 2004)”
I have to disagree with your take on group blogs– I think they have a very strong place in some educational settings. I have made very positive use of them, though I *always* have students using an individual blog as well…
I should add that there are many definitions of group blog. If you’re talking about the very narrow space of “collaborative writing” as traditionally perceived, then I agree that it’s a misfit.
You also seem to be conflating two points, or at least assuming that “group blog” has similarities to “discussion board” when that seems far from the case if you are using them effectively (plus you already made that point in the first rule
Ok….just when I thought I was on a roll with group blogs, I’m feeling like I’m headed in the wrong direction. I was going to use blogs in Canadian History as a way to collaborate….any suggestions???
Have a look at the paper that’s the source for this or this:
http://incsub.org/blog/2004/communication-dynamics-discussion-boards-weblogs-and-the-development-of-communities-of-inquiry-in-online-learning-environments
Your comment: “Don’t try and force blogging into something else” resonates fiercely with me. It drives me crazy when I hear someone ask “How can I do X with a blog?” (or a wiki, for that matter). The concept that ideas should drive your tools, rather than having your tools dictate you ideas, is the primary reason behind development that we have done at the Univiersity of Michigan, to provide an environment in which ordinary people (i.e., non-programmers) can make their own interactive web applications, designed around their unique scholarly objectives.
I wrote about this system (called UM.SiteMaker) in a short article that was published at the Apple Digital Campus Exchange. Here is a link to a copy that you can get without needing to sign up for a login there:
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/sitemaker.resources/files/when-blogging-is-not-enough.pdf
Thanks for the comment Jonathan, it’s a good looking application you’ve got going there, impressed!
Now see what you done James!
I have my students saying that group blogs arent good for education…..
I’ve been using a group blog for my students this semester and I think its been a good experience, so far…
I’ll publish my findings on my own blog down the track
Heh, whoops!
LOL
Like many others, I’m confused and a bit dismayed by your blanket dismissal of group blogs — and I strongly suggest you rethink it (or at least do some honest research) before presenting your paper. Witness the many, many previous posts questioning your judgment on precisely this point. But since I’m a big fan of your advice in general, and always open to finding something better, I did do a very carefully read-through of the DRUPAL user’s manual, just as you suggested. Obviously it’s a wonderful opensource tool! However, I also have to say it’s still far, far too complex for me to consider setting one up for my students (or even for myself for that matter). Remember, this is a proud low-tech type English professor speaking here: someone who believes that the very best thing about blogs — and the whole secret to their explosive growth– is that almost anyone can learn to build a basic one in under five mintues. The proof is in the cyber-pudding: millions and millions of new bloggers already. Including many of my own students, most of whom have set up their own blogs long before I ever assigned one as part of my course. And that’s where your blanket prohibition against group blogs just falls flat — at least for me. I just think experts (like yourself) get so accustomed to your hyper-high-tech cyberspeak that you lose focus on the needs of ordinary dumb-dumb lowend users, such as myself. But if you’re gonna call yourself a consultant, you should (re)consider our needs before issuing blanket prohibitions from On High!
As for examples of successful group blogs in education, check out Lewis Elementary School’s “Classroom Notes” as a useful example. it’s low-tech, user-friendly, and working just fine, thank you. http://lewiselementary.org/notes/
If you read the paper it’s not blanket, just hammering nails with a saw.
Too late re: presentation though
I don’t understand what you’re getting at to be honest, yes blogs have grown in use but that doesn’t prove whether group blogs work or not and the site you referenced is cute but a. isn’t for educational purposes (it’s for communicating with parents) & b. isn’t much of a blog (it’s really a website published by multiple users using a blogging tool).
Tim’s a great thinker & writer and may or may not agree with what I’m saying here, but I doubt he’d claim that that site refutes my claims.
Didn’t realise I was on-high either… but I guess it’s just a matter of perspective.
I am currently in a graduate adolescent education class centered around incorporating technology into instruction. We are researching different ways of communicating using the internet. I don’t ever use blogs but I found the views expressed by educators to be hypocritical. Either they are beneficial for education or they are not. No gray area here. I am not yet an educator but I feel that anything that can appeal to students, especially at the high school level, in terms of a communication bridge is a positive tool.