Following lunch at Quiznos,
Megan and I attended the session "
Blogging in Education". The first two speakers,
Daniel Mosquin and
Dave Smulders from UBC and BCIT respectively, talked about their experience using blogs in an institutional setting. The third speaker,
Jon Beasley-Murray who teaches at UBC, engaged the audience in a discussion regarding the implication of using blogs. Some of the highlights:
- Does writing on your blog in an institutional setting restrain the writer (psychologically or explicitly) from bringing out the personal characteristics of a blog.
- Difficult to determine the best way of developing a marking scheme for blogs. Maybe easier to mark by quantity rather than quality (i.e. number of words per week)
- Many great ideas that are posted on the current WebCT discussion forums disappear after a semester. Blogs are great because they are persistent and are good for archiving. It also allows the school to showcase some of their work.
- If these blogs are hosted with UBC, how do you enforce accountability? Who owns the work? The institution or the students?
There were a few other issues discussed but I don't quite remember them all. But it was evident that there are way more questions than answers. Clearly, blogging in education is still in its infancy. The discussions were engaging but
Megan echoed my sentiments in that there should have been more about how blogs are used to enhance the education experience rather than just the use of blogs in an institutional setting.
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