The how, what, why and where of blogging

image: Flickr ehoyer

This is a guide I have developed for students who are having to write a blog for the first time as part of their studies.

Whatever the format and purpose of your blog, this guide is intended to give you some ideas about how to get started, what sort of things to blog about and how to do it safely and easily.


First you might want to look at this short video




And here’s a blog entry about the usefulness of blogging.
Here’s another blog exploring the value of the blog in learning…..

If you are setting up your own, web-based blog, a good place to start is Blogger.com where you will find simple and clear instructions on how to begin and how to customise and develop your own blog.

Getting started

A great way to start with blogs is to read other people’s first, so you get an idea of what you want to write about and the style you might want to adopt. Here are some others to look at- as you see the topics and intended audience can be very varied:

http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/
http://wsysinspireindia.wordpress.com/about/
http://daydreamlily.blogspot.com/
http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/
http://clayoven.wordpress.com/

See if you can find others – search via Google blog search or “blogs of note” on Blogger.com

Key tips for blogging

*Start with a short introduction about yourself and your blog and invite people to make comments, giving you feedback.

*Most people feel very self conscious when they first start to blog and think they have nothing to say that anyone else will be interested in reading. Gradually your confidence will increase – but only if you practise. As with most things, little and often is the key.

*Blogs don’t all need to be in words! You can easily upload pictures and even videos to illustrate what you want to say, as you will have noticed in some of the blogs listed above.

*One important tip is not to write your blog first in a different programme (say, a Word document) and then attempt to cut and paste it into the blog. Although technically this is possible, you will probably encounter problems with the formatting and the finished product won’t look the way you intended.

*Don’t forget that you can edit and re-edit your blog as often as you like (in Blackboard, just click on “edit” at the top of the entry. With Blogger you can save entries as drafts until you are quite sure you want to publish them – but even then you can go back and change them at any time!

*Make sure you stay within copyright law if you are using videos, pictures or quotes: everything needs to be fully acknowledged and referenced just as in a conventional assignment; you may also need others’ permission to use their images or illustrations.

*Take care of your digital identity! A simple guide and workbook on the protection of your privacy and development of a positive online identity can be found in this free download

*Blogs can be used for collaboration and as forums for discussion: a post by one user can have a number of comments added which takes the form of a conversation between the author and their audience.

*Blogs can have multiple authors and so many people can contribute to the development of a body of knowledge. This is an example of a multi author blog.

*Use tags: in order to find linked postings for specific subjects, “tags” or labels are used – short descriptions which identify the key topics. Make sure you tag your own postings, and click on topics in the list of tags in the side panel of this blog, to find posts that might be of interest to you.

Feedback on this guide is welcomed. There is a space at the bottom for you to leave comments. Why not leave one now? Do you agree with the points made? What is your view? I’d be really pleased to get some feedback from you.

Thanks for reading!

Top Ten tools

for (on line) learning:


http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/janechallinor.html




itunes - educational podcasts: I found a series of Spanish podcasts that have transformed my learning of the language, convincing me there has to be more value in this medium than I currently exploit more with my own students

Twitter - the place for links, updates, chat, sharing, collecting opinions, professional and social networking

Ning - I have been part of two really valuable Ning communities for learning this year: I really like its flexibility, the attractive designs available. I intend to use it with my own students in the coming year.

Skype - invaluable for tutorials with my students and yet again for my own Spanish language studies: I meet with a teacher on line every fortnight to practice conversation

elluminate Vroom - free on line classroom (for up to three people)

Wimba create - bit of a fan currently - using to develop on line learning materials for Blackboard-hosted courses.

Camstudio - screencapture software (free download) which can be edited in movie maker with separate audio if needed.

Slideshare - upload powerpoint presentations and documents to share easily with others. Source of great learning resources too

Googledocs - brilliant tool for collaboration and sharing

Blogger - still there as my blog tool of choice


and number 11 would be diigo.com - social bookmarking site: save web links, network, create discussion groups, annotate pages and store notes.

Personal Learning Environment

Today I am about to start decorating my study. I made a joke on my Facebook profile that this is my Personal Learning Environment. In the old days, that's what it would have been.

I remember having something called a carrel in the 6th form centre at school where I kept text books, files, and stationery, and which I decorated with photos of pop stars and little artistic additions of my own. My teenage bedroom was similarly a repository of art materials, writing paper, books, magazines and music. When not at home, I haunted the local library and at University I spent many happy hours in the stacks, researching and writing.

I used to dream of a house with a private study lined with books - to me the ultimate in "on tap" knowledge and my ideal of a perfect environment in which to relax, learn, withdraw from the demands of the world. These were my ideas of what a personal learning environment looked like.

Today my study is a former dining room with some course materials in hard copy and a handful of text books but the key equipment is my PC, printer/scanner, my laptop, my iphone, the wireless broadband hub, the webcam and the phone. My physical personal learning environment is a room housing the equipment that allows me to keep in touch with the world.

Learning is not something that happens in the privacy of my study but is collaborative. It is not something handed down by an expert which I sit back absorbing passively, it is a collaborative event, and an active one.

This isn't new - seminars and tutorials were always the places where I learned the most becasue I could hear and dispute others views and have my own questioned in turn.

What is new is the fact that many of these conversations now take place on line. That most of what I read is stored electronically rather than in paper copies in my cupboards, and that the trails of my researches are noted in digital bookmarking sites rather than index cards.

To keep track of all of these digital resources requires a system - a place where all the various internet sites I use daily are easily accessed. I happen to use Netvibes: to collect "feeds" from my favourite blogs and news services, keep up with my friends' updates on Facebook and join in Twitter conversations. To remember links to important sites, and what tasks I have to complete, to access music and video sites and provide bite sized chunks of a Spanish language course I am following.

When I think of the term PLE, I sometimes think of Netvibes as the most obvious visual representation of my learning resources network, which is the reason why I am using a screenshot of my personal page to illustrate this post. But the real PLE is the whole network of colleagues - and the resources they access and contribute to in their turn (see for example this Twitter conversation about Personal Learning Environments)- with whom I communicate on a daily basis. With current internet tools, we have the capability to enter into collaborative learning that takes place on a world wide platform and yet is both immediate and highly personal.

Why blogging makes sense

A colleague asked me the other day if I would put together a short piece for students about the purpose and value of blogging. I am thinking about this....

Her reason for asking is that blogging is increasingly being used as an assessment tool for certain learning programmes and in one way I guess I should applaud this as an alternative to marking long reports and essays!!

On another level I find it rather sad that we are in danger of turning something that should be learner driven - and for the purpose of enabling learning - into something that is a performance: no doubt with assessment criteria to judge it by..... *sigh*

So why blog? I can only really talk from my own experience here: I have been blogging for a couple of years - at first I created what amounted to an on line journal that only I could read. Then I created this blog so that I could share what I thought were interesting ideas and links with my students, unrestricted by the VLE and the delays and expense involved in getting web developers to amend learning materials.

Later, other colleagues started to read and comment on my blog when I ventured to share the url on my Twitter profile and with various learning communities I have joined. I welcome the comments and feedback I sometimes get, but I still essentially do this for myself and my students.

I find blogging a way of collecting together some of my random reading and learning from the week(s) past and shaping it into something approximating my current understanding. The point is it is a work in progress; reflection-in-action (Schon); an expression of what I am currently learning and how I am making sense of it.

Here's an analogy (I use analogies a lot in my learning and teaching!): alongside my day job, for some reason now obscure even to myself, I am learning Spanish. I read novels in Spanish, dictionary in hand. I read grammar texts and exercise books. I listen to podcasts and BBC audio programmes. There is plenty of content available. However, the real learning comes from conversation (and correspondence) with other people: preferably native Spanish speaking ones, but other learners too, as I practise the formulations learned on paper and test how they stack up in real life. Can I be understood in writing and speaking the language? My Spanish teacher engages me in conversation: as she says, this is the natural way children learn to speak - by listening and copying, practising and hearing forms repeated back to them.


For me blogging is like practising a new language. I read or hear something in the news or via Twitter, or some new experience at work causes me to stop and think about what I am doing. Feedback from others is useful, but maybe the difference between this and learning Spanish is that here I am mainly trying to arrive at some sort of understanding of myself.

Blogging gives me a pause for some sense-making out of a busy week torn between absorbing and producing.

I guess the point about using blogs in education is not that they are an alternative to assessment, but that they can be a) a dialogue with oneself about ongoing learning and b) potentially - a way of developing a conversation with a guide or mentor about that learning. If tutors are prepared to enter into that dialogue, reflect back what they are hearing, ask stimulating questions, and model good sense-making behaviours themselves, then the learner can grow through their blogging and learn more still.

As the quote above says: its not educational content that is the scarce resource, its the educators who make time to have these sense-making conversations.

Finally - another snippet from my random absorption of content: a report I overheard on the radio that said teachers who themselves write regularly are better at teaching children to be good writers. So yes, lets persuade learners to blog but lets persuade the educators to do so too!!

source: The Open Ed Tech Summit Report 2008. Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona.

Trust in teams pt 2

As if in answer to my own questions, I came across this interesting Trust building Model in the Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams, Nemiro et al 2008, Jossey Bass, San Francisco

The three axes for building trust, virtually and in face to face teams are simple:

Competence - believe the team can do the job, involve them in decisions and make sure they have the right skills

Contractual - maintain boundaries, keep agreements, delegate appropriately

Communication - share information, tell the truth, give and receive constructive feedback, admit mistakes, maintain confidentiality

This has helped me to pinpoint where things have been going wrong in a virtual project team I have been working with over the last few weeks:

Specifically, I have had little involvement in key decisions about the project, constructive feedback has been poorly recieved and met with defensiveness rather than an admission that mistakes have been made. Furthermore, deadlines agreed have not been met and promises not kept: my trust in the team is pretty low as a result .....!!!

Is this model useful in pinpointing where trust has been betrayed and what new behaviours might rebuild relationships?