Blogging: an introduction

Weblogs, or "blogs" for short, have many uses in education, as tools for publication, research, administration, and more.

By Bobby Hobgood, Ed.D.

Learn more

• edublogs.org Free weblogs for educators.
• Landmarks Blog Meister An online blogging tool designed with teachers and students in mind, where the teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students' blog articles in a controlled environment.

Related pages

• Discuss it with discussion boards and forums: This "Teacher Time Saver" looks at free tools for creating Web-based discussions.
• Best practices in school library website design: You're a librarian, not a web designer, but you can have a school library website that meets the needs of students and teachers if you keep it simple, don't take on more than you can manage, and focus on what you know.
• Improving your technology utilization: A quick review can help you determine whether your school is making the most of its technology budget.

Related topics

• Learn more about blogs, communication, education technology, publishing tool, student journals, technology, and web-based tools.

Help

Please read our disclaimer for lesson plans.

Legal

If someone invited you to take a look at their most recent blog, would you wonder if they had made a great error or created something good? Your response would depend on how knowledgeable you are of this relatively recent Web-based productivity tool. The blog, short for “Web Log,” provides a range of communication and publishing functions from specific interests like cemeteries to broad categories like education.

A blog is a web-based journal. A personal website. It’s that simple. Most blogs have only one author, although it is possible for others to contribute to the blog. Unlike a traditional journal, however, a blog offers other features that make it particularly useful to education and other professions.

The phenomenon is now so widespread that there are several books on how to blog as well as a few that discuss how blogs are changing our culture. The concept actually began when Web geeks like me began to post links to interesting articles or sites they located on their own website. They added commentary to these links and continued to post on a regular if not daily basis. As others began to read these postings, a culture developed around their use. A cursory review of blogs pinpoints the birth of the blog somewhere in 1994 when Justin Hall wrote about his passions in "Links from the Underground." Clearly, the blog is a milestone in journalism and media history. Individuals are empowered to publish their ideas at no cost. But a blog is not really journalism. It is more about sharing and managing information.

A blog is a journal.

Like a traditional journal, a blog can be made public or private and entries into a blog are organized according to date. Entries might be something as simple as “My daily musings”, poetry, essays, discussions of books, articles and websites, or possibly project updates from a member of a workgroup. Take a look at the “knowledge” section one of the most popular blog site providers, Blogger.com. Like other blog sites, Blogger offers a free service that allows the individual to create an account for either a public or private blog. For an additional fee, Blogger offers the Blogger Pro version that includes functionality beyond the basic ability of posting new entries to a journal.

A blog is a diary.

A blog may appear to be nothing more than another device to facilitate personal vanity, allowing an individual to talk about himself or herself. Many web journalists easily dismiss blogs as having no value beyond their outwardly self-serving appearance. Yes, this is true for a number of blogs. In education, however, a teacher might use blogs in this way as a strategy for helping middle school students share their feelings about any number of class issues. Each student would create his or her own blog. With or without prompts, the blog would create a vehicle for ongoing communication between teacher and student, hopefully strengthening the relationship between the two and creating a perspective on the individual student that might have otherwise not existed. In this way, a blog serves as the student’s personal diary. Diaryland.com takes this approach to enticing users. This free service allows anyone to create his or her own online diary without the worry of a secret hiding place or special key.

A blog is a publication tool.

Though many educators have their concerns, the web has made it easier for anyone to publish almost anything via the Internet. The blog as a publishing tool makes this happen without the intervention of an editorial board or panel of reviewers. A simple application in education would have high school students to publish their writing journals for everyone in the class to read, not just the teacher. Students could easily see what their classmates thought of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery or of Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. They might even be able to respond directly to a classmate’s blog, giving them some feedback on their writing. Concurrently, teachers have access to an archive of students’ writings. What a great way to monitor the progress of student writing! Imagine how a teacher might use student blogs to demonstrate progress of a Limited English Proficient student.

A blog is an administrative tool.

Teachers can use blogs to share information with students or parents. A blog could be used as an electronic syllabus that changes daily according to the changing needs of the class, as in this syllabus for a computer science course at Washington State University. The instructor can easily add links to other documents or sites that are relevant to that particular entry or date. For example, notice how this blog serves as a bulletin board for review questions for a final exam in a research course. A blog could also serve as a communication tool for daily homework assignments. The additional advantage of the using a blog for this purpose is that it creates an archive of all previous assignments — a nice record for both teacher and parents when someone can’t remember that a homework assignment was actually assigned on a certain date!

A blog is a research source.

Since many blogs are very specific in their focus, you can use them as a source of information for research. (An example is David Gagne’s blog on webdesign. In some cases, since the information is posted directly by an individual and does not have to first pass the desk of an editor or review board, the information might reach the consumer more expeditiously. The individual who posts the information can also offer the personal insight that might escape a large news agency. Of course, the danger of using blogs in this way is that the information can be biased; the consumer should exercise good information literacy skills when deciding whether to use the information for some scholarly purpose. (Rule of thumb: can someone else verify this information?)

Wrap-up

Blogs are great tools for use in education. Whether used as student journals, bulletin boards, administrative tools, or sources of research, the blog’s versatility offers a number of functions which educators should find appealing. Their informality and ease of use make them engaging to those who have discovered them. Their currency makes them another source of information as we seek answers. Their ability to spawn discussion from one blog to another make them excellent tools for hearing both sides of the story and encouraging participation from everyone.