Weblogs, or 'blogs, are cumulative online journals. They have been around since the mid '90s and have been used for an increasingly wide range of purposes. Blogs make it simple for anyone anywhere in the world (with internet access!) to publish whatever they choose on the internet. Some blogs are purely personal diaries. Others record information and links on a specific theme.
As the concept of blogging has matured more and more people have begun to make use of them in all kinds of ways. Professional and academic uses are being made of weblogs, for example as reflective professional journals or research diaries. In an educational context, blogs can be used by students, academics and professionals to document learning over time. Feedback functions can be used for critique by and discussion with peers, or for feedback from a tutor or mentor. A teachers might use a weblog to create a sense of community for a large or distant cohort, provide up to date information about the course or perhaps for discipline based news.
Blogging software is freely available, and for the less technically minded, there are a range of online services that provide the infrastructure for easily maintained weblogs. Most of these include functions for profiles, opportunities for responding to and discussing entries and so on. Such services include Blogger, Wordpress, DiaryLand and Xanga. If you'd like to discuss the possibilities of using weblogging for learning, please get in touch.
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