Student, MDE Program, Athabasca University
Instructor, NWCC, CCP Program (Adult Literacy)
Prince Rupert, BC, Canada
Academic EduBlog URL:
http://me2u.athabascau.ca/elgg/glenngr4/weblog
CIDER presentation:
http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/sessionarchive/
EduBlogging Eco-Systems
This is a learning object prepared by Glenn Groulx about edublogging. It contains five rich pictures, a brief text description, and a 12 minute podcast.
Centralized edublogging systems occur when the main activity is taking place within the class blog, which is authored and maintained primarily by the instructor. The learners are dependent on the instructor for resources, suggestions, topics, and feedback on their posts to the class blog. Very little interaction occurs among learners, except as comments on others' posts as specifically requested by the instructor. Very little posting activity is occurring within individual students' blogs. The centralized blogging ecosystem is the most common form of system in place, often considered by the instructor as a replacement for regular forums, but allowing the potential for student-initiated discussions outside the class blog. Assessment of student posts is often done either by the instructor using rubrics, or by the student as a summative reflective post, or not at all.
Decentralized edublogging systems occur when the majority of the students' posting activity moves from the class blog to within individual blogs, with the instructor taking a more mentoring role offering resources, exemplars, and encouraging individual student bloggers to share their discoveries with their peers. There is a reciprocal exchange of experiences about how to find resources, and how to make use of them. Individual learners share their thoughts and ideas with other learners, making use of more than the class blog and the instructor for resources. Students share how to use RSS feeds, bookmarks, links to multimedia resources, journal articles, and interact more deeply with others by weaving others' ideas into their own posts.
Distributed edublogging systems occur when the students are capable of interacting across multiple blogging networks, utilizing the course as just one node of activity. The course-related posting activity is distributed across multiple blogs, where individual learners are all drawing from their own individual aggregations to process and share multiple sources such as Slide-Share, Twitter, YouTube, RSS feeds, Delicious bookmarks, Tag Clouds, Google analytics log reports, posterous, etc. The posting activity becomes much more self-directed, rather than aimed primarily at other students and the course instructor. The instructor animates the blogging activities of the course participants, and models the aggregating activity for other co-learners to emulate and pass along to others, not just peers within the course, but to other students within the program, and other learners within other learning communities such as CIDER, CEET, SCOPE, etc.
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walk-blogging field test
Walk-Blogging Field Test
I did a live test while walking tonight, and made some observations on the conditions of the test. It was actually not too bad - as long as I kept the recorder close to my mouth and spoke slighly louder than normal conversational volume, the quality, although not broadcast-quality, is fairly comprehensible.
Some questions immediately come to mind:
Why bother? What is the benefit of this for students?
Why should teachers think about using walk/talk blogging?
First, Walk/Talk Blogging enables learners to practice/produce the following:
1. samples of student self-talk, such as observations of things during field trips
2. short notes to self, such as important notes, action items, details
3. dialogues with peers, experts
4. semi-structured interviews and Q/A sessions involving students, teachers and experts
5. meetings
6. prep for presentations
7. talking through study notes
8. expressing uncensored, unedited talk allows for talking around a topic
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Walk-Blogging
Walk-Blogging - this is a term I made up while walking along, thinking through my ideas for assignments, and was wondering if I could somehow capture the ideas in real-time, and post them to my blog as notes I can then review and re-work.
I needed to sit down, alone, in a chair, and type this out. I would like to be more active and sit less, type less, and reveal a bit more of myself, my thinking, rather than hide behind the writing on the screen.I now have been trying to use a digital voice recorder - it is cumbersome, it picks up the extra noise, and I currently limit the recording to times when weather is not too rainy so the device is not damaged. I carry it around with me in my pocket, and switch it on for recording when I want to make some verbal notes. I have it in my hand, and speak into it. I also sometimes bring a digital camera,to take photos and video clips as the possibilities arise, as well as a smartphone. I use the phone for safety reasons, but also to send myself twitter notes - the obvious drawback is that I need to stop and use the smartphone, key in some ideas, and then resume my walking. This, to me, defeats the benefits of steady walking, and can get annoying. So, for me, bringing a cellphone while walking is a necessary evil - I would opt to turn the thing off, and keep it handy if needed. The whole concept of walk-blogging presupposes you have time to walk for about 30 minutes or longer at a stretch everyday, and that you are committed to the routine. It also presupposes that your route is not too challenging so that you end up losing your breath and have difficulty speaking clearly while walking. It also presupposes you have already picked out a route relatively free of vehicle traffic. An urban environment is probably not the optimal space for trying walk-blogging - the noise of traffic is going to be too loud for capturing self-talk.I live in Prince Rupert, BC, and I can take trails through old rainforest that muffles and bypasses the noises of traffic. On rainy days, the traffic's noise is made louder, so I try to avoid walking on paved roads. This cannot also be done successfully, mind you, especially if you are walking with a specific destination in mind, like "downtown". There is some traffic on the roads where I walk, so I always aim to choose a route with minimal traffic, and vary my walks to co-incide with times where there is less traffic.Again, in small rural areas, this is a choice, thanks to my teaching schedule. For urbanites, the chances of having optimal outdoor walk-blogging conditions is challenging. For many, the lifestyle is not conducive for walk-blogging because they are unable to escape from incessant noise and congestion. (You can tell I was a former urbanite, can't you?)On some days I encounter deer, eagles, ravens, and depending on where I walk, I can also catch sight of seals and otters, off the beaten track. I prefer to do walk-blogging outside, I mean, the idea of walk-blogging seems to pre-suppose that, as i could never imagine me engaging in self-talk in a gym working out on a row of machines alongside dozens of others in close proximity. I prefer walk-blogging that allows me the chance to interact fully with the natural environment. Obviously, walk-blogging is not something you want to do in a shopping mall, for instance, or in a parking lot. I would like to please ask readers not to engage in walk-bloggin in those ways. You will be a danger to yourself and others, and irritate people to boot... So, anyways, I try to walk a route with a few other walkers who won't be alarmed to hear me talking to myself. Using a digital camera to capture short video clips and pictures is a nice to have item while walk-blogging.Walk-blogging also presupposes you don't want to be plugged in to a portable music system. You don't also want to have any headset that covers your ears - you need to be fully aware of your environment, watching for cars, other walkers, etc.
This is particularly true when walking in the woods or along trails. You need to have your ears and eyes wide open. I need a device that can withstand moisture - from rain and from body sweat - I walk and I heat up, and the moisture builds, so this is a consideration for me when deciding on a technology solution.I take two 30 minute walks a day, back and forth from work. A device that can be strapped or clipped to my belt, for example, into which I can record voice data, would be amazing. I am serious about walking to help me clarify my ideas. Thanks to sustained walking, I have benefitted from a drop in blood pressure, a loss of 20-25 pounds so far, increased energy, improved immune response, and so for me the idea of having a means of capturing the products of my experiences while engaging in sense-making, while also doing something that benefits my health, is a worthy goal.
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Online Resources on EduBlogging
This is the link to my blogroll from the bloglines.com account.
http://www.bloglines.com/public/ggroulxProviding this link to you all reminds me of the time I was presenting to faculty at the THIS IS IT 2005 conference, in Kitchener, Ontario (I think it was) and met up with Stephen Downes for a chat during dinner. He pointed me to the use of the bloglines.com aggregator as a very useful tool for collecting and tracking the activity of bloggers.Here is a link to the collection of bookmarks I have been compiling about edtech and edublogging, as well as other topics.http://delicious.com/ggroulxIn addition, for something different, I have been playing around with pageflakes, to compile different resources to one central portal site. Here is my take (not yet recently updated) on the subject of edublogging:http://www.pageflakes.com/edublogging/If you want to view my academic edublog, you can go to http://me2u.athabascau.ca/elgg/glenngr4/weblogIn addition, for podcasts I have created on the subject of edublogging, go to http://edublogging.posterous.com/I would enjoy engaging you in a dialogue about the use of blogs for instruction, so don't hesitate to drop me a note.Comments [0]
podcast - solo & dyad: an exploration of private edublogging
This podcast explores the two types of edublogging for student blogger apprentices: both the SOLO and DYAD models are explored and described.
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podcast - summary of CCK09 session 4 - notes
These are the some of my own notes on the discussion of the core principles of connectivism as described by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in session 4 of their connectivism course.
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Stages for Idea Development in Edublogs
In this podcast, I discuss Lilia Efimova' stages for idea development, and give more details to the edublogging experience for indivdual student blogging.
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Field Blogging Toolkit
This is a practical introduction to field blogging.
Here is a sample of some of the devices useful when preparing to capture data in the field for transfer to a laptop or PC befoer publishing to one's blog.
The type of data, taken as a gestalt, captures the process as well as the product of learning. The cognitive schema used in a blog post that records and documents these primary sources (original student-created photos, rich pictures and podcasts) to form a more comprehensive, coherent whole, would differ markedly from the schema used to record secondary sources.
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