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MMM 3333

The document discusses the educational use of blogs in U.S. education, highlighting five major applications such as replacing class web pages, linking to relevant Internet items, organizing discussions, and requiring students to write blogs. It provides examples of blogs used in scholarship and instruction, including those by professors Trey Martindale and David Wiley, as well as practical applications in K-12 and higher education settings. The document emphasizes the benefits of blogs in enhancing communication, collaboration, and engagement among students and educators.

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17 views1 page

MMM 3333

The document discusses the educational use of blogs in U.S. education, highlighting five major applications such as replacing class web pages, linking to relevant Internet items, organizing discussions, and requiring students to write blogs. It provides examples of blogs used in scholarship and instruction, including those by professors Trey Martindale and David Wiley, as well as practical applications in K-12 and higher education settings. The document emphasizes the benefits of blogs in enhancing communication, collaboration, and engagement among students and educators.

Uploaded by

1314apt
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Exploring educational use of blogs in U.S.

education

Downs (2004) discussed five major uses for blogs in education. First, teachers use blogs to replace the
regular class web page. Instructors post materials such as class times and rules, assignment notifications,
suggested readings, and exercises. Blogging software makes such posting much simpler for instructors. Second,
instructors begin to link to Internet items that relate to their course. For example, people can maintain a blog to
pass along links and comments about different topics. Third, blogs are used to organize in-class discussions.
Fourth, some instructors also use blogs to organize class seminars and to provide summaries of readings. Finally,
students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course work.
2.2 Example of using blogs
In the United States, there are national technology standards that are adopted in K-12 education. Currently,
98 percent of states in U.S. use the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). Guided by the
technology standards, instructors do not only use technology in teaching, but also require students to create
projects with technology. Below are only a few examples of blogs used in U.S. education.
2.2.1 Using blogs in scholarship
There are a number of blogs in scholarship in the U.S. higher education. Two blogs are typical examples
which created by two professors. The first one is Trey’s E-Learning at http://teachable.org/blog created by Trey
Martindale, a professor of instructional design and technology in the University of Memphis. This blog is about
news, research findings, tools, and some other interesting items about online teaching and learning. The other is
http://opencontent.org/blog/, a blog created by David Wiley, a professor of instructional technology and Director
of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Brigham Young University. He dedicated to increasing access
to educational opportunity for everyone around the world.
2.2.2 Using blogs in instruction
Some professors use blogs in instructions, from using a blog as a teaching and learning resource to asking
students to create a blog on their own. Discussed below are two examples of instructional blogs, one in K-12
setting and the other in higher education.
As a Fulbright scholar and media specialist in an elementary teacher, Riddle (2008) went to China in summer
2007. She used a blog for her third graders for book reviews, recommendations, research and summary for her
ancient Asian studies class. The blog kept her readers knowing about her trip in China. Embedding slide shows,
Google maps, and video clips with the blog, she informed and engaged her readers and created a small learning
community about Chinese studies. Her blog was responded by students, former students, teachers from her school
and neighboring schools, parents, grand-parents, and community members. The blog continued to play a role as a
learning and communicative tool for the third graders as they begin their studies of ancient China.
Quible (2005) shared the use of blogs in the business world for his undergraduate students. Some common
usage in business education include communication and collaboration for a distributed team, using it as a tool for
reaching out to a customer community, for project management, for quick information communication such as
project updates, research, and product and industry news inside and outside the business, and managing and
improving the flow of information among employees. He used blogs in written business communication courses.
Based on his own experience, Quible summarized the advantages of using blogs in written business
communication courses: (1) students can become familiar with another Internet application that has powerful
communication capabilities; (2) information is shared with students electronically, which makes it available to
them more readily and easily compared with hard-copy format; (3) the class administration cost is reduced with
the use of the electronic format; and (4) examples of students’ writing are easily and readily shared with others.
2.3 Research about EduBlogs

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