This week and next I’m helping to facilitate an online discussion on the use of blogs in education for about 400 members from the B.C.-wide Educational Technology Users Group.
We are facilitating the discussion through a multi-author Typepad blog (there are 4 other facilitators involved). We’ve structured the sessions to begin with an introduction to what blogs are and how to read and write them. We’re now moving into Day 4 and from hereon we get into far more interesting stuff – what are the actual applications of blogs in education. It is a very diverse group of participants ranging widely across job descriptions, disciplines and skill sets.
To help facilitate this discussion and my own thinking on it, I’ve worked up this matrix of some of the possible uses of blogs in education.
A big caveat here – this matrix very much approaches the topic in the context of ‘formal’ education, and only really considers students, instructors and ‘the rest of the net’ as actors. Obviously one could add much to this – librarians, institutional RSS feeds … That’s why I titled it ‘Some’ uses of blogs in education. Even just considering this limited set of actors, I have definitely left much off. And I didn’t try to enumerate all of instructional events and applications you could facilitate through blogs (e.g. webquests as one example).
My goal here was to illustrate that blogs are about both writing and reading, and that one’s professional practice and ones instructional practice can be facilitated with the same technology. It’s aimed at an intro audience. I’d really love to hear any feedback on this. Do you think this would help people new to blogging understand some of its potential, or by creating this matrix am I just blinding them to other possibles uses not captured here? Thoughts, comments, etc appreciated. This is an early draft and if there’s interest I’ll share the source doc later on. – SWL
Hi Scott, I like your matrix very much and would like to post it on my own weblog – if you agree.
Jochen
I like it and expect to use it when discussing with students and colleagues what blogs are good for. Have added a reference to it in the section on blogs in the collaborative learning environments source book at http://www.criticalmethods.org/collab/v.mv?d=1_30
Nice job Scott,
It would be great if we could access the links in the matrix. Can you post a “live” version or is it restricted to your group?
Skip
Hi Scott,
I like the matrix and plan to use it when talking with instuctors about academic blogging. I used my EduResources Weblog as a tool during my sabbatical to explore ideas and web sites and as a way to contact fellow professionals. At the end of the sabbatical I was able to print sections of the weblog as a way to document and report on my sabbatical activities. I guess this application would fit within your categories for Instructor “Discipline-specific blog” and “Annotated links blog.”
Joe
Joe, you could probably fit it under there, but you could probably make add it as a new ‘usage’ too. This definitely wasn’t meaning to be comprehensive. The only reason the ‘usages’ are defined with the scope that they are is that I literally am not capapble enough of designing this layout with many more listed and still having it legible. I guess the other reason is not wanting to overwhelm the audience – in this case 400 or so educators in B.C. with a wide variation in degrees of prior exposure to the technology. What I’m hoping is that the actual axis make sense to people, and one can the extend this either through different actors, different relationships and definitely through additional examples of ‘usages.’
Cheers, Scott.
I wonder if it would be useful to separate ‘weblogs’ from ‘RSS/aggregators’. I believe that there is enough say about reading and writing weblogs without involving RSS.
For the record, I’m not a big RSS fan (at least in using RSS to read weblogs and news). I think the benefits are overstated, the technology, immature (i.e. most if not all aggregators aren’t ready for prime time).
You could probably have a useful discussion of uses for RSS in education, but I think it is a separate discussion.
People can read and write weblogs without RSS. If some folks want to rush ahead and dive into RSS, then that’s fine. But there are probably a lot that are more comfortable (and interested) reading weblogs in a browser and surfing using bookmarks, link lists, blogrolls, whatever. You can probably get 80% of your benefits going that route.
My two cents,
Ed
Some uses of blogs in education
Scott puts together an ace matrix of some uses of blogs in education…
EdTechPost: Matrix of some uses of blogs in education Archives
EdTechPost: Matrix of some uses of blogs in education Archives Do check out the matrix that will be used at BlogTalk Weblog in British Columbia.
Blog Uses in Education Matrix
Scott Leslie has drawn up a nice matrix of uses of weblogs in education. The gap I notice is in simply facilitating communication within the school community, as Tim is
A Matrix of Weblog Uses in Education
” Scott Leslie …
Matrix of Web Logs in Ee
Scott Leslie has posted a matrix for Web logs in education that I think is a pretty good start to plotting out the hows and whys of classroom use.
Matrix of some uses of blogs in education
From EdTechPost: Matrix of some uses of blogs in education Here’s a direct link to the diagram….
Some Uses of Weblogs in Education
I think this matrix by Scott Leslie is a great start at understanding the many ways that weblogs can be used by educators. Matrix Graphic: http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/matrix2.gif
Blog的教育应用矩阵图
Blog的教育应用矩阵图 Scott绘制了一张教育中的使用Blog的矩阵图。相信这张图对于所有想要在教育中实践Blog的老师们会很有启发的。 — ……
Blogging workshop
…Here, for example is a (perhaps somewhat arbitrary) collection of blog criticisim links I assembled for the talk…
* Leslie, Scott. “Matrix of Some Uses of Blogs in Education.” EdTechPost. 9 Oct. 2003.
[...] Links for Blogs as a Teaching Tool in a Tertiary Institution Presentation Internet access has been scarce, so I haven’t been able to blog the conference. I’ll update with a summary post once I’m back. In the mean time, I’ve listed the links highlighted in my presentation for easy reference (in order of appearance).Annual Survey on Infocomm Usage in Households and by Individuals for 2006 [pdf]Technorati | Blog search engineBlogger | Free blogsWordpress | Free blogsEduBlogs | Free blogs for educators & studentsFlickr | Photo hostingYouTube | Video hostingTeacherTube | Video hosting for educators (unlimited)SlideShare | YouTube for PowerPointsReason & Persuasion | John Holbo’s module blogMatrix of some uses of blogs in education | Scott LeslieThe street finds its own use for things | Henry Farrell’s five usesPC1432 | Physics IIe module blogLSM1303 | Animal Behaviour module blogCL2280 | Basic Translation module blogNM3216 | Game Culture (Design) 1 module blogNM4210 | User Experience DesignA view from Singapore | Christopher Fahey on the NM4210 student blogsUrban Transport Issues Asia | Paul Barter’s professional interest blogQBlog | Office of Quality Management blogRaffles Museum News | RMBR news blogUsing NUS Module Blogs | If you’re reading this, you’re reading the blog!Blogs as Personal Learning Environments | James Farmer [...]
[...] Matrix of some uses of blogs in education | Scott Leslie [...]
[...] http://edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2003/10/09/Matrix-of-some-uses-of-blogs-in-education [...]
[...] http://www.webducate.net/dragster.php The most successful thing I think I’ve ever published on this blog was the simple “matrix of blog uses in education” that I posted in 2003. It has been translated numerous times and I see it referred to lots of place on the web. It’s always been really gratifying to see the novel ways people re-used it. About 2 years ago I wrote about one of the re-uses that really tickled my fancy, a Flash-based version that allowed users to drag and drop different “uses” onto a matrix. It seemed like a really useful tool for facilitating discussion. [...]
[...] A few years ago, Scott Leslie published his matrix of some uses of blogs in education, which provides a very useful analysis of potential applications for teachers and learners. [...]
[...] Scott Leslie’s ‘Some uses for Blogs in Education’ [...]
[...] Scott Leslie’s ‘Some uses for Blogs in Education’ [...]
[...] Came across this old personal clipping from EdTechPost: a matrix of uses for blogs in education posted back in 2003. Since that translates to about 50 years in Internet Time, I wonder if Scott’s matrix still holds true. It does for me (with some additions based on wikis and the rise of personal video) but does it hold true for you? [...]
[...] Matrix of some uses of blogs in education | Scott Leslie [...]
[...] Matrix of some uses of blogs in education | Scott Leslie [...]
[...] Scott Leslie’s ‘Some uses for Blogs in Education‘ [...]
[...] Scott Leslie’s ‘Some uses for Blogs in Education‘ [...]