Just finished reading Blogging thoughts: publication as online research tool by Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker.
Though the article is written back in 2002, many of the things still hold true for blog, a genre as defined in the article. Looks like blog has more or less adopted its present form back then. Some of the interesting ‘findings’:
Blogger Pro, which provides more features, is available back then.
The Theory of the Public Sphere by J�rgen Habermas is used to describe/determine the private-public nature of blog.
One feel safe in his/her blog as you have total editorial control, and the posts are often short and unpretntious.
Rigours and formal citation practice in academic writing is practised in blogs through links. These links are random and it allows one to share experience (books read, website visted etc). These links are ‘vital to the genre‘.
Blog This by Henry Jenkins is the first article published on weblogs by an academic.
Expressing one’s thought in a blog may result in one losing his own ideas too early. This is one of the greatest fear of an academic, due to the current ‘reward system’ in the trade of academia.
The chornological arrangement of blog entries documents our thought processes. ‘Unedited, spontaneous, scrolling away‘ thoughts are always on the top of the page.
Popularity of a blog is determined by how often it is linked by other blogs/sites. Blogs tend to come together in clusters as they linked to each other.
The look and feel (visual appearance) of a blog is important.
A good source for MT templates
This website has links to multiple sites with skins/templates for Movabletype 🙂
Some ways to use RSS for educators
Found this article entitled “RSS – The Next Killer Apps for Education” exploring the possible application of RSS in education. Going through the examples, these are the possiblities mentioned:
1. Creating/maintainng a blog for lesson resources, RSS used to notify fellow colleagues of updates
2. Self development, updating oneself of Science news through a RSS feed subscription
3. Monitoring updates of multiple sites at once, example of superintendent overseeing happenings in 49 schools through their updating of news in respective web sites
4. Networking with peers with the same interest, example of researcher ‘finding’ each other through one blogging and the other subscribing to the RSS feeds.
A teacher will be able to adapt these suggestions into use for our classroom setting. Idea 1 and 2 can be used stright away. Idea 3 can be adapted for use to monitor a class of 40 students instead. Idea 4 can be used to build Community of Practice among peers in same/different schools.
[source: Bee – coming a Webhead]
Sharing of (edu)blogs with fellow R&Dians
During the meeting yesterday, I shared on blogging and here is the mindmap which I used.
Another round of blogvangelism completed 😛
WordPress Multi-user
If you are trying out WordPress Multi-User, you’ll need to add the php file as directed in this post.