Using blogs in large classes

In a post in “blogs for learning”, Alex Halavais, from Quinnipiac University, considers the use of blogs in large classes. The entry relates several experiences with blogging in large classes and considers the issue of evaluation of student writing in the class blog, its time consuming nature and wether it is necessary for te teacher to evaluate all posts.

clipped from blogsforlearning.msu.edu Abstract In this short article, I hope to provide some examples of failures and successes in managing blogging in large classes, and some indication of where this might go in the future. Like many people, I started blogging in small senior-level seminars. This was in 1999, and at the time there were not really blogging systems available, and like many other people, I had to write my own. What I saw as a very simple way to replace email lists and bulletin board (forum) systems turned out to be an extraordinarily effective way to encourage conversation among students, and I have used blogs in most of my classes in the years since. Today, blogging in a small class is a fairly easy way to get started for both students and teachers.

Book review: Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools
by Lynne Schrum & Gwen Solomon (2007)

(Note: This item is available for loan from Fisher library. Click here to reserve this item)

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging Web 2.0 technologies and their use in the classroom and in professional development. Topics include blogging as a natural tool for writing instruction, wikis and their role in project collaboration, podcasting as a useful means of presenting information and ideas, and how to use Web 2.0 tools for professional development.

Also included are a discussion of Web 2.0 safety and security issues and a look toward the future of the Web 2.0 movement. Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools is essential reading for teachers, administrators, technology coordinators, and teacher educators.

Schrum and Solomon explain and detail the state of modern education, the wide variety of new technologies that impact teaching and learning, and introduces some of the coming challenges.

Click here to read Chapter 1 in full.

Book review: Pro Web 2.0 Mashups

Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services by Raymond Yee

(Note: This title is available from Fisher library. Click here to reserve the title.)

Summary

The modern Web is awash with data and services just waiting to be used, but how do you make effective use of all this information? The answer lies in APIs (such as Google Maps, Flickr, and Amazon Web Services) and remixing, or mashups. Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services teaches you everything you need to create useful, dynamic real–world applications using APIs, web services, Ajax, web standards, and server–side languages. All you need to make full use of this book is basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and at least one server–side language (such as PHP or ASP.NET).

Highlights include the following:

• Looks at the overall shape of todays Web from a developers point of view—what are its main features, and what is available for us to use to develop applications?
• Contains real–world examples of creating mashups using all the major APIs.
• Contains examples written in multiple server–side languages.

What you’ll learn

• Understand how the constituent parts of the modern Web fit together—web standards, Ajax, APIs, libraries, tagging, blogs, wikis, and more.
• Create different types of mashup, for example mapping mashups, search functionality, calendars, RSS/Atom feeds, social bookmarking, online storage systems, open document formats, and more.
• Build Web 2.0 applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, server–side languages, APIs, and libraries

Who is this book for?

This book is for any web developer who is already comfortable with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and at least one server–side language and wants to learn how to create Web 2.0 applications.

About the Author

Raymond Yee is a data architect, consultant, and trainer. He is currently a lecturer at the School of Information, UC Berkeley, where he teaches the course “Mixing and Remixing Information.” While earning a PhD in biophysics, he taught computer science, philosophy, and personal development to K–11 students in the Academic Talent Development Program on the Berkeley campus. He is the primary architect of the Scholar’s Box, software that enables users to gather digital content from multiple sources to create personal collections that can be shared with others. As a software architect and developer, he focuses on developing software to support learning, teaching, scholarship, and research.

Web 2.0 and Education

From the Blog “e-Learning etc”

- Posted on May 22, 2008

“Control by Web 2.0″ is like “sober Lindsay Lohan”

I am always surprised by the amount of “web 2.0 bashing” by learning and development practitioners. My most recent experience was during a class about educational theory where a guest speaker had
come along to tell us about web 2.0 as applied to learning. Basically -e-Learning 2.0 as defined by Stephen Downes.

I feel compelled to address this briefly as it seems to me to be a contradiction. Web 2.0 is a social tool, it is used socially, that is how it emerged, unlike the classroom, educators do not “own” this domain.

Web 2.0 is designed for collaboration and communication, which presents a conflict with the banking model of education. In a classroom, we seem to face the teacher, who plops information into us while we sit there passively, in web 2.0 environments, those “chairs” form a circle, where everyone’s input is valid and people feed from each other, not just the teacher.

We do not naturally learn by passively sitting in a classroom accepting information, we have been conditioned into this as a result of the industrial revolution because mass production meant that the
kiddies needed to be out of the factory and it seems the same mass production was applied to humans and machines. Prior to this, people learned from those around them in social situations it seems. Consequently web 2.0 presents an opportunity (and a conflict) to return to social learning, where people learn by collaborating and communicating because that it how we use it already. We expect to be able to comment, contribute and collaborate using these technologies!

Is Web 2.0 ‘Designed for Education?

Is Web 2.0 ‘Designed for Education?’ 3/5/2008, by Trent Batson

Designing anything in Web 2.0 requires new thinking.

Higher education for centuries has worked within a closed world where educators could design physical spaces and learning sequences (the curriculum) based on predictable circumstances. An educational designer could work within a much more restricted set of variables than what we see now.

We look at those myriad variables of spaces and sites in Web 2.0 and we find ourselves talking about “learning spaces” instead of “classrooms.” With that noun shift, we’ve let the genie out of the lamp. If primary academic learning can occur in places other than the classroom or lab, then educational designers are faced with too many confounding variables to apply the same traditional formulas and metrics.