blogging

This occured to me as a result of reading some other academic blogs, one of which deals specifcally with technology in history teaching (the excellent edwired).   It lead me to thinking about whether I could be encouraging  colleagues to blog, as I believe it is valuable and could be a benefit for them.

Blogs can of course be used for teaching as well as personal reflection.  One of the great strengths of them is the number of ways in which they can be used.  I feel that they are particularly useful for the research process, and can be used as a good tool in research supervision (I was supposed to keep a research diary when I did my PhD, but I did little with it and nobody checked).  I did find blogging useful when coming to my viva, as I was able to clarify some thoughts in writing and reflect on the process.

As a teacher I find blogs to be of use in reflecting on the teaching process.  I can write reflectively on classes and on other aspects of the role - I have in the past written a number of posts considering being fair when marking work that is in one’s own research field

In the past I have tried to encourage students to blog. I have done this for a number of reasons, primarily as I believe it encourages them to write reflexively and to find their voice. I also feel that it can help with group cohesion, particularly if a group blog is available.

I’ve not had much luck with getting them to use the technology, not least because for many of them, blogging is not something they already do. Facebook does seem to be something that many of my students are on, and so I’m going to experiment with using it as a means to get some group cohesion and for communication over the coming year. To this end I’ve set up a group for Tsars and Commissars. Still, there does remain the issue as to how comfortable students might be interatcing with a tutor on Facebook.

It seems like if nothing else it will be an interesting experiment.

I’m a fan of blogging for students, but it’s hard to get them to do it.

This might help

I’ve been trialling this, but have some misgivings about the platform.  It does include blogs, which might help to bolster my campaign to get students blogging…

Still, I feel that Wordpress or Elgg would be better for a number of reasons.

My mentor finally gave me some comments on my blog case study paper for the PGCLTHE.  He was very favourable and made some good points that will be helpful both in adapting my practice and possibly in getting others in the field to take it on.  He highlighted that the blog provided a good integrational tool for the various strands already used in teaching and for creating group coherehncy.  He also, just as I had, picked up on the fact that I was the lone blogger in a department that didn’t have much of a culture of blogging (yet).  This might change in the future, but maybe I should tune my attentions to getting my colleagues to blog more…

Maybe blogging is a bit of a curse for our readers (if I actually have any)

Now you can find out your “BlogInfluence quotient.” Just enter your blog URL, and a variety of search engines (like Technorati) will be pulled for stats.

(from Google Blogoscoped)

My influence[1]