blog.ac.uk - the consequences

Well - last Friday certainly was a blast.

Even though the day panned out well - better than could have reasonably been expected - it was extremely frantic for me. One of the things that kept me sane through the whole process something Stephen Downes said at last years International Edublog Awards: While Dave Cormier carried out the thankless task of identifying the years top ten edublog stories, Stephen  suggested that the number one story should actually be the way that edublogging individuals had become an actual community - not in any abstract sense but in the very real, public, and meaningful way that people had reached across the globe to one another to share work, ideas, problems and aspirations.

This model of practice was very much what inspired and enabled last Fridays event to go ahead. So in addition to the delegates, facilitators, and to Stephen and Barbara, I very much need to extend my gratitude to the international community of edubloggers who have been so generous with their time, ideas, arguments and selves. A special shout out must go to James Farmer, who was very much at last Fridays event, in terms of inspiration and gossip (shh!!!).

I couldn't blog on the day, so I'm throwing in a Q & A I did for Stephen O'Hear after the jump.

> 1. Can you describe why blogs are a useful learning
> tool? What's so 
> special about blogs?

First and foremost, blogs are typically really easy to use, providing learners and practitioners with an extremely sophisticated, professional looking web presence in minutes. Instead of trying to understand the intricacies of HTML or web design software packages, you can just fill in a few forms and be up
and running.

They’re also usually easy to customize – which is good for both for people wanting to express themselves and for people who have to work within branding guidelines.

Secondly, blogs are all about community. While you can use them privately, or in small groups, and assign different levels of privacy to different posts and areas of your blog, they shine as a function of distributed conversations – as collections of points within networks of comment, conversation  and other blog posts. This is really exciting in terms of developing a whole range of essential skills.
Literacy is undergoing a renaissance thanks to weblogs and social software – a new generation of learners are alive to the possibilities of reading, writing and communicating in many different contexts – peer groups, geographically local groups, interest groups, and global communities.

Blogging not only supports basic literacy, it helps develop digital literacy skills and e-confidence in learners – both of which are increasingly essential to life and employment opportunities. And it’s possible to develop a meaningful voice via a blog – whether this is the voice of an individual in dialogue
with the wider world or the voice of an organisation communicating and engaging with the community they serve.

> 2. What different kinds of ways are blogs being used
> in the 
> classroom?

There are some amazing things going on across the UK, in all education sectors. English as a Foreign
Language tutors for example have found blogging a great way to develop reading and writing skills within peer networks. Schools have been using blogs for citizenship work – to enable students from different parts of the world, or or from different areas and with different experiences of the same city, to discuss issues that matter to them. Researchers have found blogs to be invaluable in creating the visibility to forming working relationships with people with very specialised interests across the globe.

Blogs are also increasingly being used as platforms to produce and to syndicate multimedia
content – making audio/visual files of lectures, assignments or discussion available. There are many
fantastic and inspiring examples of learners, educators and oranisations using blogs around – the
International Edublog Awards is an independent, not-for-profit organisation designed to showcase some
of the best examples.

> What will the conference hope to achieve?
>
The conference is an opportunity for many passionate and committed colleagues who know each other online to spend some time working offline together! Its also an opportunity to take advantage of the wealth of expertise and experience we have across the UK to develop projects, to demonstrate success, and to create ways forward for other organisations and individuals who want to engage with new generation technologies. In particular, we’ll be looking at issues around personalisation, and how new technologies can make this happen in a meaningful (rather than tick-box) ways, and also at how we can support both our learners and educational professionals in becoming as confident, creative, safe and responsible online as we’d want them to be offline.

Comments

[James Farmer]

C'mon... what's this gossip thing about then :)

[Josie Fraser]

Well, the Birmingham meetup of course. Or what I can remember of it. ;-)

[Emmadw]

So, what happened at the Birmingham meetup then ?!

Thanks for this summary - I'm now starting to catch up with everything, as I had a mountain & a half of marking to do once I'd got back.

I'd got this open in one tab, when I was reading Scott Leslie's comments about DrawDoc , so posted your post in ... interesting set of images get generated!