The Learning Curve

The Official Blogs for Learning Blog

11

College Students Fail to Impress at Researching Online

Posted November 17, 2006 by Jeff Siarto

Inside Higher Ed reports on some interesting findings in how college-age students use the internet to find information. The article points out that reliance on the first page of hits (99% of users!) and the Google search engine are two large missteps on the part of the average student.The article talks about the findings of a new study from the Educational Testing Service. They gathered information from 6,300 students at 63 academic institutions and found, according to the article:

“…when asked to select a research statement for a class assignment, only 44 percent identified a statement that captured the assignment’s demands. And when asked to evaluate several Web sites, 52 percent correctly assessed the objectivity of the sites, 65 percent correctly judged for authority, and 72 percent for timeliness. Overall, 49 percent correctly identified the site that satisfied all three criteria.”

There are lots of other search engines and other resources. Visit some of them in addition to Google. Triangulation, or checking for the same information in more than one place, is essential if you want to be sure there is truth behind what a website says — especially if it isn’t a peer-reviewed piece of work.




14

Wordpress MU 1.0 Launches

Posted November 17, 2006 by Ethan Watrall

On October 23rd, the fine folks at Wordpress officially launched the 1.0 version of Wordpress MU (http://mu.wordpress.org/). Wordpress MU (the “MU” is for Multi-User) is the system upon which Wordpress.com is based. Basically, it allows for someone to create an multi-user administered blog system in which users can create and self-administer their own blog - think of a (relatively) easily installed version of Blogger (only based on Wordpress). Since setup is a bit more complex than the 5-minute install of regular WordPress, MU is best suited for a more server-savvy audience. However, the server requirements for Wordpress MU and the regular version of Wordpress are pretty much the same.Wordpress MU could be used to create a central hosted blog systems for teachers or students (either school/department/program wide or in a particular class). Wordpress MU is currently being used to drive the edublog (http://edublogs.org/) blog host and at Harvard (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/home/).




5

Blogs for Learning Launches

Posted October 26, 2006 by Ethan Watrall

Well, its official folks. After a month or so in open beta, Blogs for Learning has officially launched. In the coming months we’ll be adding some new features and improving our current ones. If you have any thoughts about Blogs for Learning (what you love about it or how we can make it better), don’t hesitate to drop us a line. In the meantime, pop on over to Digg.com, and digg the story of our launch (http://digg.com/design/BlogsforLearning_Launches)




3

A Lesson on the Connectivity of Classroom Blogging

Posted October 25, 2006 by Ethan Watrall

As most of my colleagues and students know, I use a blog in all of my classes. I use it to communicate and discuss with my students. I also use it for a variety of student assignments. This semester, I’m teaching our intro to web design class (standards based, XHTML, and CSS). In the case of this class, my students have a series of what I call IDMs (Inspirational Design Models) assigned to them throughout the semester. Basically, the IDMs are websites on which they have to write a critique that they then post to the course blog (due on a Monday). By the following Friday, they need to respond to one of their fellow student’s posts.A couple of weeks back, my students had to critique Jason Santa Maria’s blog ( www.jasonsantamaria.com). Unbeknownst to my students, Jason had actually noticed a referrer to his site from my course blog awhile back, and was watching as student’s wrote their critiques on his work. He reciprocated by writing a rather extensive post on his own site, responding to many of my student’s thoughts. Unfortunately, some of my students were not that polite in how they critiqued his site. In many cases, what was supposed to be a critique turned into a criticism. To Jason’s credit, he was incredibly professional in how he responded to some of my student’s posts.

He addressed specific posts directly (and actually identified the students by name), admitting that they were right in some cases, and gently and tactfully explained why they were wrong in other cases.What was even more interesting with the fact that Jason’s post generated a flurry of comments from people all around the web. Some comments were amused by the whole thing, some comments were very constructive, and some comments (surprisingly) were downright nasty (both to me and to my students) What was even more interesting was the fact that the South by Southwest site metablogged his entry, thereby pushing it further and further out into the blogsphere.I talked about the event extensively with my students after the fact. Some were uninterested, some were shocked, and some were amused by the whole situation. The punchline that I tried to get across is that you can’t write anything on the web without it at least having the potential of being noticed. And in todays age of blog trackbacks, pings, and referrer statistics, posts almost never go unnoticed.




7

Pageflakes 2.0 & Flock

Posted October 18, 2006 by Adam Bellinson

Page Flakes, a very powerful, ajaxy portal site, just released version 2.0, adding a fresh new (themable) look and dozens of improvements! I very highly recommend checking out this site. View rss feeds, listen to podcasts, and so much more.I also wanted to mention a good tool that I forgot to mention in my previous two posts, yet it should belong in them! Flock is “web 2.0″ browser platform, based on the popular Firefox browser. With the latest release still pre-1.0, it is still a tad rough around the edges, but it has a number of nifty integrated features including blog posting, RSS reading, and easy Flickr photo management. It has a number of other innovative features as well.




7

Questions from Educators

Posted October 18, 2006 by Mary Groom

I work with educators in areas surrounding Jackson, Michigan. Many of the tech directors and educators are interested in Blogging, but there are many questions. Maybe some of you can help answer these?The first question that arises with Technology Directors and Human Resources is how does blogging fit in with DOPA and CIPA regulations? These laws keep coming to “protect” students, and they are well-intentioned, but how can you put Blogging on the agenda and still stay within the law. Schools are busy blocking all the Blogs–how do schools let some in, and keep others out?THanks for your comments–and any other questions that you’d like to pose. The conflict between tech savy teachers and tech directors is constant and will probably never change. But the conversation needs to take place.Mary




3

How to Post to a Blog

Posted October 13, 2006 by Adam Bellinson

You might be wondering what the heck I’m going to talk about. Of course, most people don’t have any issue logging into the admin area of their blog and writing the post in whatever type of editor is available in the admin tool. Well, it just so happens that most blogs have an API (application programming interface) that allows external software to communicate with the blog, doing things like retrieving, editing, and creating posts. There are quite a number of options, but I’ll mention some good ones.

Windows users:

Check out the free w.bloggar. It looks like a very nice blogging client. ecto is also a very nice choice for Windows and OSX users, but it costs $17.95.

Mac users:

Marsedit is a very smooth application, requiring a $24.95 registration fee. Also check out the aforementioned ecto. I discovered I could even blog with TextMate, my favorite text editor.You’re still using the web with this one, but WriteToMyBlog offers a pretty feature-rich wysiwyg interface for posting to your blog. No registration required, easy posting to multiple blogs, etc… I’m not entirely sure why this is tool so compelling (maybe it’s not!) but it’s brand new, and they say they are still working on some new features.I personally feel that it’s more ergonomic to use a specialized application like these to author blog posts than to log into the website. This way, you can have your browser free to review web info as you incorporate it into your post without flipping between tabs or using a new window. Also, it’s usually made very easy (typically a simple drag ‘n drop!) to upload and insert images. Especially if you post to more than one blog regularly, a comfortable, rich client might be a very nice thing indeed!Finally, I’d like to point to This page on the WordPress Codex that further explains why you would want to use a blogging client, and also has a very comprehensive list of them for all major platforms.




1

Adobe Adds Sophisticated Blogging Capabilities to Contribute 4

Posted October 5, 2006 by Ethan Watrall

“Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced immediate availability of Adobe® Contribute™ 4 software, a new version of the award-winning web publishing solution designed for business, education and government workers to easily and safely contribute content to the Web without having to learn HTML. Key features in Adobe Contribute 4 include new blog publishing capabilities, unified web publishing, enhanced Microsoft Office integration for Windows® users, and Adobe Flash® video support.”Read more here.




1

RSS frenzy hits Blogs For Learning!

Posted October 4, 2006 by Nicole Ellison

Through no planning on our part, we have two excellent new additions to the site, both of which focus on RSS. David Parry from the University of Albany has written a thoughtful piece which made me reevaluate the importance of RSS in a blogging classroom. His piece is available in the articles section, or you can go to the article directly. In the BFL blog, Adam has posted a nice synopsis of RSS tools. If you have comments on the article, you can post them here. Enjoy!




1

RSS: Web News Simplified

Posted September 29, 2006 by Adam Bellinson

If you read blogs or news sites with any regularity, you may have found it a cumbersome process to visit each of your websites, looking for new content. It just so happens that RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication,” provides an alternative way keep up with your favorite websites without opening them all in your browser.By taking the form of nothing fancier than a simple XML file, RSS succeeds in being ultra-portable. There are countless ways to access and utilize an RSS feed — that’s the whole point. If the idea of keeping up-to-date on all your favorite websites as effortlessly as possible appeals to you, then I invite you to check out some nifty RSS tools.

Mac OS X

If you’re a Mac user such as I have recently become, you might like NetNewsWire Lite. Although this software offers only a subset of the features found in the $30, non-lite version, it is free and serves as a very comfortable RSS reader in OSX. NewsFire is another popular choice, but at $18, it still isn’t free. If free is what you want, Vienna and Shrook are reasonable choices.

Windows

NewzCrawler ($25) is highly touted as one of the best. FeedDemon ($30) is from the same people as NetNewsWire, so it’s probably good as well. If you want free, try Omea Reader; it looks to be of quality.

Linux

Lifera: Linux Feed Reader. They even link to their competition right there on the main page.

Everybody!

This is the best section of them all! These solutions can be used on any of the major Operating Systems.

Comment on this article with your favorite way(s) to work those RSS feeds!Update: Oh, and I meant to mention the brand spanking new RSS reader from Google. All the smoothness of Google Mail in an RSS reader!




1

Blogging For Education

Posted September 24, 2006 by Adam Bellinson

Hello bloggers! My name is Adam Bellinson, and I’ll be making periodic posts to this blog over the course of the semester. The purpose of this site is to equip educational bloggers with the tools needed to effectively use a blog for class. I’ll be discussing various methods to blogging including blog applications used on your server as well as posting applications used on your own, local machine.I’ve found a couple nice resources that I’d like to share to get you started.

Stay tuned for an article about RSS and how it can be used for very efficient blog consumption!




2

Non-Pseudonymous Student Blogging: Ethical and Legal Concerns

Posted September 14, 2006 by Nicole Ellison

As I was figuring out all the logistics for my courses this fall, both of which include a blogging component for the students, I spoke with a few other instructors that I knew had used blogging in their classroom. I was surprised to learn that many of them did not give their students the option to blog using a pseudonym. I found this concerning for a number of reasons. My primary concern was ethical: was it appropriate for me to force my students to make their work public? Although I wouldn’t be asking them to blog about anything remotely related to sensitive issues like sexuality or religion, my writing prompts do ask students to give their opinion on current topics related to the focus of the class (social impacts of new media). Did I want students to have to own these writing assignments forever, thanks to the caching affordances of Google?

I see an undergraduate education to be a time in which students are exposed to new ideas for the first time. If the university is doing its job, students should feel comfortable trying on new philosophical approaches and should encounter new ideas, some of which might make them feel uncomfortable. This does not seem to be a situation in which students should be forced to own their words forevermore in the eyes of potential employers and others.Perhaps more important, Eszter points out that non–pseudonymous student blogging may have legal implications. These practices may violate FERPA, a Federal law that protects the privacy of students’ educational records.On the other hand, I can understand why instructors might ask their students to use their real names. Perhaps they feel that the benefits of blogging accrue more rapidly when authorship is claimed. Perhaps part of being part of a global conversation about ideas is about owning your ideas. Perhaps it’s just easier to grade.How have you handled this issue? I’m interested in hearing arguments on either side of the debate.



0

Blogger Gets A Facelift

Posted September 4, 2006 by Ethan Watrall

Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), Google’s trailblazing hosted blog service, is going to be getting a facelift in the near future. While the “new” Blogger will retain its easy to use and accessible interface, it will feature some new an innovative features (relative to its current incarnation).

Access Control

Up until this point, there was no real (short of implementing an .htaccsss password) to limit access to your blog. With the new version of Blogger, you’ll be able to set your blog as private, accessible only to specific people who you set. This is particularly useful for project blogs to which you only want project members to have access. Its also useful for family blogs.

Labels/Categories

The new Blogger will now allow you to organize posts into specific categories, thereby allowing your readers to filter posts. This is a feature which is pretty much standard for any moderately robust blog system (hosted or installed), but has been lacking from Blogger.

Layout

Using the new layouts feature, you’ll be able to move around parts of your part in an easy drag-and-drop kind of way. You’ll also be able to choose new fonts and colors with a few mouse clicks. When you change colors and fonts, you’ll see a preview of the blog in real-time, so it’s easier to decide what’s the best choice.Even though Blogger has some expertly designed templates, changing those templates has always required a fairly deep knowledge of XHTML and CSS. For Blogger’s primary audience (casual & “quick” bloggers) changing a template’s code was often prohibitive. So, these new layout features will certainly be welcome - especially to those who don’t want to futz with XHTML and CSS.

Feeds Galore

“In addition to the usual feed of your blog posts, you can have a feed for all the comments on your blog, and even individual feeds for all the comments on each separate post. Your visitors can use these feeds to find out if someone responds to their comments, or to follow discussions on your blog. The default format of the feeds will be upgraded from Atom 0.3 to Atom 1.0. Also, for you die-hard RSS fans out there, you’ll be able to optionally get all feeds in RSS 2.0 format instead of Atom.”

New Dashboard

The Blogger Dashboard will be getting a nice and shiny new coat of paint.

Google Accounts

Perhaps one of the most noteworthy features of the “new” Blogger is the fact that authentication is going to be moving over to Google accounts. This means that, generally speaking, your Blogger account will be more secure. It also means that you’ll be able to use your Goggle login/password to access your Blogger account - thereby removing the necessity to remember yet another password.All in all, it looks like this new version of Blogger will be very slick. While many of the new features aren’t that innovative to those who work with other blog platforms (such as WordPress), they will be very welcome to those who use Blogger because they don’t have the time, inclination, or knowledge to go through the (often technical) shenanigans involved with installing and setting up a blog on their own server. Blogger’s power lies in the fact that its a popularity system - easy to access and use to the average joe or jane shmoe.For the moment, the “new” Blogger is available by invite-only. “The Blogger in beta program is going to start out small, so only a low percentage of people who log in to Blogger will see the option to switch over. If you’re one of them, you’ll see a blue box in the sidebar of your dashboard highlighting the new Blogger in beta.” If you want to test the new Blogger by creating a new blog you can do that at beta.blogger.com. Here’s a test blog created with the new platform and a tour that shows the new features.