Relect on the use of Blogs and Wikis

In the latest issue of Reflect, Liz Boyden suggests some ways of using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. She covers blogs and wikis so if you haven’t used any of these tools yourself, want to know more or want some ideas of how they might be used by learners, then this is a good article to read.

I particularly like how Liz uses Tumblr, a blog that enables learners to put short multimedia posts on their own webspace, including photos, text, video clips and sound files. For work based learning, this could be particularly useful for also hosting the kinds of electronic information that currently goes into an e-portfolio.

Liz notes:

“….Tumblr was the most successful blog application used in the project. It has a visually attractive layout and potential for learners to create a professional-looking webspace … Learners could post photos from Google images and then make a text post explaining the image. A particularly successful use of Tumblr was as a daily online diary when learners were on work experience.”

As well as reading the article, you can also watch a short video on Liz’s own blog to hear more about their learners using their new Tumblogs.

In the article, Liz also gives some good hints and tips for using blogs and wikis, much of which also links in nicely with the advice JISC Legal gave last month regarding legal implications of using web 2.0 tools.

There’s clearly some good work going on at the Project Experimental Teaching (PET) project and I look forward to reading more about how it develops!

Wobble on your Mobile

Thanks to a referral from a colleague and another free site you can now access a version of wobble formatted especially for your mobile. This great (free) tool turns a html version of a blog like this one into something that on your mobile looks more like the image below.

The MoFuse, or Mobile Fusion web tool allows anyone to easily and instantly create a mobile version of their blog or website. Its simple navigation makes reading updates in your phone much simpler - so now, to read wobble on the go you just need to point your mobile web browser to: http://wobble.mofuse.mobi/

Several learning providers are already using blogs to share information with their learners. Sandwell Training Agency and Swansea ITeC to name just a few. Through the e-guides programme, work based learning providers are also increasingly considering ways that blogs can be used to keep in touch with their learners.

Using this free tool this could be further extended by providers very easily creating mobile versions of the same for free. This has the added advantage of keeping learners up to date in a format that is mobile friendly and easily accessible to them. With so much interest in mobile tools at the moment, content in mobile friendly format is certainly something worth being aware of.

Related links:

· Blogs in Plain English – short video highlighting what blogs are and how they might be used.
· Discussion about Blogs on Innovate
· Molenet - 32 Projects that focus on using mobile technologies for learning

(Thanks for the link Jim)

Blogs in Plain English

Part of the NIACE E-Guides staff development programme has recently been extended to include a section that looks at the significance and the usefulness of blogs as a tool that can support learners.

Commoncraft have also made a 3 minute video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal and I think that it supports this area nicely. It helps people understand why you might use a blog and how it works – in just 3 minutes. (By Lee and Satchi LeFever)

There is also a good regional example of a provider using a blog to support their learners and staff highlighted on our website. This outlines the impacts and benefits for delivery staff, assessors and learners.



(By me posting it here it also shows how easily you can embed a video in a blog. Yet another reason I’m also a keen fan of blogs myself!)