Why blog together? James Farmer- founder of edublogs.org
Published by admin May 15th, 2006 in blog Tags: No Tags.
In this interview James Farmer of Deakin University, clarifies the benefits of using social software for educational purposes. He explains how and why he became a blogger and what social software tools like Word Press Multi User (WMPU) have to offer online communities.
Click to listen to the podcast (7MB) of Why blog together?
Click to download the .doc print version Why blog together? or the .pdf version Why blog together? (27kb).
Looking forward to any comments or questions :)
Congratulations to The Knowledge Tree on the transition to WordPress. I’m about to go down the same road on a VTE project and will be watching with interest as The Knowledge Tree grows and develops to provide lots of interesting opportunities for interaction by readers. I’ll start the ball rolling by commenting here and then by subscribing to the feed for this entry. Well done!
Or ticking the subscription box :)
James - you say about a teacher who blogs that they
” you are able to drive discussion in a much more effective way than if you were, say, just another participant in a small discussion board somewhere.”
There are some who might read this as a teacher-centred approach. Is that OK? Is that what you’re advocating? That at least in part, it’s OK for the teacher to be ‘centre blog’ (= centre stage) occasionally? In contrast to what Leonard Low recently suggested (at http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=6620) that the teacher be the “Hack at the Back” - setting up, troubleshooting, responding to students needs, and problem solving, to help learners to get to the information.
Teacher presence is absolutely critical, can’t emphasise that enough. Cognitive presence and even social presence depend on it… you need a teacher very much steering the class - as a facilitator / tone setter / and guide though rather than a sage.
I would be interested to know why James feels that tryiing to encourage students to keep an effective, reflective journal is a ‘terrible use of weblogs’. His his views would be much appreciated - I am a design tutor currently investigating the potential of using blogs as a tool for personal development planning (higher education).