Overview

In this tutorial you will:

learn what a blog is

understand how blogs may be used in e-learning

identify different types of blogs.

What is a blog?

A blog is a website where you can make daily entries – it's an online journal.

Your most recent entries are displayed at the top of your blog page.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news, some function as more personal online diaries.

A typical blog combines text, images, links to other blogs, web pages and other media related to its topic.

http://del.icio.us/prep4elearning/blogs - links to articles about blogs and free blog hosting services [web link not working?]

A student’s blog

You could use a blog for your:

individual or group project

e-portfolio

assessment.

Your blog could contain:

your self-reflection on what you have learned

photos of work you have done

links to videos of you performing a task

links to sound files of you interviewing someone in your industry

or just about anything else you can think of!

A teacher's blog

Your teacher may set up a blog for:

course notes and other content

activities and assessments

weekly schedules and to-do lists

or just about anything else your teacher and your class can think of!

Your teacher's blog can also have links to the student blogs for your class.

Can anyone see my blog?

It’s up to you. You can set up most blog in any of these ways:

Public – Anyone can view your blog and leave a comment.

Semi-open – Anyone can view your blog, but only people you nominate can leave a comment.

Private – Only the people who you nominate can view your blog.

Setting permissions in Google’s blogger.com

Working together with blogs

Blogs can be a tool that can help you work with others. They can take learning out of classroom and to a place and time that suits you and your fellow students.

Leave comments on other students’ blogs.

Create a group blog – one person sets up the blog then adds other people as contributors.

Link to other people's blogs from your own – sometimes called a 'blogroll'

Get immediate updates by subscribing to other students' blogs with a web feed (also called RSS).

Moblog

With a moblog (mobile blog) you can upload you posts from your mobile phone.

Your posts may be text, or it may be photos or video that you shoot on your phone.

This is really useful if you are completing a project on a worksite and you don’t have easy access to a desktop computer.

http://del.icio.us/prep4elearning/moblog - blogging sites that allow moblogging [web link not working?]

Photoblog

Most blogs contain mainly text, but some focus on images.

You can upload photos from your computer or from your mobile.

Using your mobile you could upload photos from a worksite for a learning task or an assessment.

In a photoblog, your blog posts always contain a photo, with a caption and a short description – http://del.icio.us/prep4elearning/photoblog - links to photoblogging sites [web link not

working?]

Audio and video blogs

You can also record your blog posts with a webcam and/or microphone, and upload the video or sound file with a title and short description.

This sort of blogging is very similar to podcasting and vodcasting (video podcasting).

http://del.icio.us/prep4elearning/podcasting - podcasting websites [web link not working?]

http://del.icio.us/prep4elearning/vodcasting - video podcasting websites [web link not

working?]

Summary and follow up

Summary

In this tutorial you have:

learned what a blog is

learned how blogs may be used in e-learning

identified different types of blogs.

Follow up

Try these activities:

listen to the interviews with teachers on you could use blogs

try the blogging activities in the ‘Try it’ section.