chanced upon this MA research paper “Learning through Weblogs” in my google alert today, this research paper examined edublogs from a higher ed. students’ perspective. the abstract reads:
The study reported in this paper examines students’ perception of the use of weblogs as learning tools; it also explores evidence of learning within blog postings. Two Ryerson University courses in Information Technology Management that require students to use weblogs are taken as examples. Twenty-two students from these two courses participated in an online survey concerning their blogging experience. The participants had very good computer knowledge—most of them had previous experience using blogs. Most of them thought that building and maintaining a blog was an easy task. However, the research shows that students’ perception concerning the use of blogs as educational tools was neutral—students also perceived the impact of using blogs on their ability to learn the course material as neutral. The study shows a lack of clear communication between instructors and students, which could have had a negative impact on students’ learning experience. Furthermore, the study indicates that most students perceived the content they posted in a somewhat negative way. A content analysis performed on 22 blogs demonstrates that that the objectives of each course played a significant impact on the evidences of learning apparent in students’ blogs. Students in group B demonstrated more evidences of learning then students in group A. Overall, the study shows that the use of blogs as learning tool in university classrooms is promising. Providing students with clear goals, objectives and expectations could help them to build and maintain their blogs in a way that could be more beneficial to their learning experience.
the full paper in doc format can be downloaded here.
APA reference:
Gagné, C. & Fels, D. (2007). Learning through Weblogs. In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2007 (pp. 2518-2526). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
ISTE – NECC – NETS
this 2nd post within an hour is to capture the recent NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) held in San Antonio, organised by ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). reading a highlight from eSN, saw NETS (National Educational Technology Standards) being mentioned. looks like i have not been tracking developments in FRAMEWORK for quite some time *LOL* anyway it’s now included in the storeroom, so will read more about it when time permits 😛
oh yes, the NECC 2007 Research Papers can be found in this archive, and the NECC 2008 Papers here.
classroom of the (near) future?
“She is one of 650 students who receive an Apple Inc laptop each day”
“compete for high scores by completing mathematical equations”
“It has no textbooks”
” ‘The dog ate my homework’ is no excuse here”
” ‘Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed’ ”
“Computers track a range of aptitude levels, allowing teachers to tailor their teaching to their students’ weakest areas”
” ‘Our projections show that 50 percent of high school courses will be taught online by 2019. It’s about one percent right now.’ ”
“Horn expects demand for teachers to fall and virtual schools to boost achievement in a U.S. education system…”
” ‘You deliver education at lower cost, … a teacher can spend with each student because they are no longer delivering one-size-fits-all lesson plans’ ”
exciting development i would say but ‘demand for teachers’ doesnt sound too good though i dont really agree with that 😛 how will the school (in today’s definition) become and what would be the teachers working more on, assuming the subject matters can all be first taught by software?
check out the full article “Technology reshapes America’s classrooms“.
Culture Bridge 文化桥, revamped!
it’s been another long while since there’s any update to this blog, and today marks a day worth celebrating — the long-awaited (albeit 6 months delay) revamped version of Culture Bridge is officially launched. Culture Bridge (aka 文化桥) has been the babies of multiple webmasters, and i believe the current webmaster Tan Ying 丹盈 (and 凤琳、自金 as well) must have been through a great deal of efforts to get this revamped version go live. thank you for taking over the work and giving the Bridge a new breath of life 🙂
am regretted for not being able to contribute to new content much as we wished to as our current “full-time parents, part-time student” portfolio is unexpectedly overwhelming. however, i shall end this post with another great news for the future development of Culture Bridge, as on this very same day, Adobe has announced that it’ll release codes needed to search engine developers to make Flash content indexable! yes, until now the Flash-based Bridge has remained a ‘void’ to the web spiders, so what better news can there be 🙂
iBreadCrumbs – archiving and sharing your research journey
saw this new online tool mentioned in Anne Davis’s post and thought it’s a nice tool to try out, and best of all, you get to share your findings with other users. something about the tool:
iBreadCrumbs is…
A Social Network for Researchers
to Share Recorded URLs, Track Websites,
Review Notes Online, and Encourage
Online Collaborative Research.
to find out more, visit the site now!
2 things that came to my mind before i actually try out the tool:
1. the dynamicity of the www can lead to the fast outdating of our research. for how long would such a research ‘history’ be useful and how much would it benefit other fellow users?
2. organising makes info more mearningful but it takes effort and time as well if we were to review the list recorded by the tool and strike off sites that we deemed not useful. not sure if this would be too overwhleming.
will try it out soon 🙂