Instructional Blogging: the Pedagogy of Blogs

When weblogs (or blogs) first started out, doubtless anyone would have realized how much of an impact they could have from an instructional standpoint. Businesses, agencies, and institutions use them as a way to provide value or knowledge to anyone that might stumble upon them; however, this can also be one of the pitfalls. How do we know if a blog, an educational blog specifically, actually adds any value or if it is just opinion, spotty, or faulty information? The following blog will attempt to identify types of educational blogs and how to determine if they are appropriate for use or not.

Educational blogs come in many forms, but they seem to center around the following three areas.

• Student creativity: These blogs are used as a resource for students or classroom enrichment. They provide a location that students can write or post things that are interesting to them, a location that teachers can post class events, and provide access to 21st Century media. A good example of a student creativity blog is: http://blogs.goaj.org/amoore/
• Teacher resource: Resource type blogs fall into two sub-categories: 1) blogs where teachers post classroom content and supplementary information for students (course syllabus, etc.); and 2) blogs that teachers can go to as teaching resources with ideas, activities, etc. A good example of a teacher resource blog is: http://edutech4teachers.edublogs.org/
• Teacher improvement: Improvement type blogs center on developing better educators as a whole. These focus on studies for both teachers and administrators that provide updated papers, new techniques, and provide other methods for improvement. A good example of a teacher improvement blog is: http://www.edutopia.org/

Blogging Best Practices

• Feed the beast: in both business and educational blogs, people expect two things: lots of content and new content. If either of those things are not kept up on, the blog will die out. If you don't metaphorically "feed the beast" the beast will die, or worse, will turn on you. Teachers should be prepared to blog often. A good example of a blog that does this is: http://darcymoore.net/. Bloggers on darcymore.net have posted recently, often, and have been doing so for a long time.

• Add value: Blogs should provide a level of value that cannot be produced otherwise. In the instance of student creativity blogs, they add value if the students can see their own work (both writing, art, or videos) being shared with other students, parents, teachers, etc., or even better if they students can directly affect the content. With teacher resource blogs, if the tools being advocated are not creative or novel in some way, teachers will not find them valuable, and will move on to other resources. A good example of this kind of blog is: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/, a teacher improvement site that pulls in many professional sources and looks clean and organized.

• Creative use of media (video, social media, slide shows, pictures, etc): One of the premier opportunities that blogs provide is the ability to introduce students (or teachers) to various forms of 21st century media. Capturing student participation on video--when appropriate--or even allow students to film and post video or other media sources will build student confidence in using the technology tools they will be using in the workforce. Teachers should look for ways to incorporate modern technology as much as possible. A good example of this kind of blog is: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ which has some form of media engagement for each displayed blog post (both videos and images).

• Modern layout: While having a blog with a professional look and feel is not necessarily a requirement for having an effective blog, it sure helps. Providing content in a very organized, meaningful, and professional manner increases the confidence of readers in the material just as a clean and organized storefront increases the confidence in the quality of products the store sells. Many blogging platforms do not require advanced HTML knowledge to post a professional-looking blog. A good example of an educational blog with a good layout is: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/

Blogs are a unique resource in education, and while they should not necessarily be used as authoritative citations in educational works, they can have a valuable impact on teachers and classrooms.