Social Media for Education

Blogs – what are they

• Online diary style website
• Quick and easy web publishing
• Offer instant communication
• Regularly updated
• Require little technical knowledge
• A social / networking activity
• Links to other online resources
• Try the Guide to Using Blogs in Economics
• Example – Primary Teacher UK – information, news and resources blog for primary teachers in the UK

Blogs in Plain English

… or sample some blog related links from Delicious.

Blogs – potential uses – teaching and learning

• Replacing standard class web pages
• Professor-written blogs which cover interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course
• Organization of in-class discussion
• Organization of intensive seminars where students have to provide weekly summaries of the readings
• Requiring students to write their own blogs as part of their grade

From Henry Farrell contributor at Crooked Timber

Blogs – more potential uses

• Writing up as you go along
• Floating new or embryonic ideas
• Dissemination of research results
• Take advantage of the “invisible college” of fellow academics
• Engaging with the public to raise the level of debate on education issues
• Sidestepping the mainstream media for publicity
• Education blogosphere dominated by policy and e-learning issues
• Great potential for reflection? See Julie Hughes 2006 ALT-C paper

Exercise

• Register for an account at http://wordpress.com/
• Add a new blog post http://support.wordpress.com/posts/
• Write a few short lines on how blogs could be used in education
• On the right hand side of the Edit Post screen, add the tag escelearn
• Publish your post

Advanced

Chat with one of your neighbours, find out the web address of their blog and leave a comment on their blog post or on this blog at http://escelearn.wordpress.com/

Note

All of the other exercises have an optional blog related element – you can start to add to your blog by following the rest of the exercises