Blogs in Education

This page is designed to provide you some resources if you want to get started using blogs for yourself or with your students.

The use of blogs in instructional settings is limited only by your imagination.

Options for instructors using blogs:

Options for students using blogs in your courses include:

Articles About Blogging

  1. Scholars Who Blog from the Chronicle of Higher Education (June, 2003)
  2. Weblogs in Education: Bringing the World to the Liberal Arts Classroom from the Newsletter of the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (Winter, 2003)
  3. Writing with Weblogs from techLearning (Feb, 2003)
  4. Weblogs In and Around the Classroom
  5. Blogging communities' popularity draws students from the Minnesota Daily (March, 2003)
  6. Crooked Timber - a blog entry about educational blogging

Example Blogs

  1. mamamusings.net - and instructor's blog for sharing personal and professional commentary
  2. Applied Calculus - using a blog as course communication tool
  3. College Composition - a class blog with links to each student's blog
  4. Writing Class Blog - for students to communicate and share ideas with other students
  5. Weblogg-ed - a blog about educational blogging
  6. Gangstories - **language warning**. This is the kind of emotion and writing we would hope to free students to express via this medium.
  7. Blogs at Harvard Law - blogs for faculty and students
  8. The Information Literacy Land of Confusion - a librarian's blog for sharing resources
  9. The Shifted Librarian
  10. Ned Batchelder - software engineering
  11. Jim Berkowitz's e-Journal - marketing
  12. Outside the Beltway - political science
  13. Neuroeconomics - economic theory
  14. Mildly Malevolent - history and politics
  15. Bloviator - public health and policy
  16. Research Blogs - an annotated list of weblogs of researchers and academics
  17. Professors Who Blog - a list of blogs with general topic area
  18. Blogwise - a list of blogs by category
  19. City Comforts - mostly about architecture
  20. Eatonweb Portal - another categorized list of blogs

Blog Writing Tools

  1. Blogger.com - free, host on your server or theirs with advertisements
  2. Easyjournal - free
  3. Tribe.net - free
  4. Crimson Blog - free, but might include pop ups
  5. weblogger.com - not free
  6. Radio UserLand - desktop software you buy - requires some server space for publishing
  7. TypePad - not free
  8. Xanga - free basic service
  9. SchoolBlogs - not sure how long this has been or will be around, but it's free
  10. Silver Logic - not sure how long this has been or will be around, but it's free

Aggregators

Aggregators are programs that gather your favorite blogs and present them in one, basic text format for quick review. Only those blogs that have RSS feeds can be read by an aggregator. Those blogs usually have a little orange XML graphic ( XML feed button ) which links to the RSS feed. That is the URL you would input to the aggregator.

  1. Amphetadesk - download and run on desktop
  2. HotSheet - download and run on desktop
  3. Feedreader - download and run on desktop
  4. Snarf - runs on Internet Explorer
  5. Bloglines - browser-based

For a list of more see hebig.org/blog or Backend.UserLand.Com.

If you want to have your blog aggregated, RSSify at Wytheville Community College currently offers the service for free. You just need to follow the instructions to add the appropriate information to your blog template.

Tools for Advanced Blogging

  1. Blogrolling - helps to manage blog links
  2. BlogBack - free commenting system
  3. Haloscan - free commenting system
  4. SquakBox.tv - free commenting system
  5. BlogSpeak - free commenting system (only for Blogger users)
  6. Blogpatrol - track visitors and add polls
  7. Bloglet - readers sign up for email subscriptions to your blog