Title: Blogs
Course: TOPkit Sample Course Lite > Section: Module 5 - Enhancing Your Course with Emerging Technology

Notes for Course Facilitator

Summary:

This page defines blogs and provides instructional strategies to incorporate blogs into instructors' online and mixed-mode courses.

Suggestions:

- It is recommended that this page be updated to include specific resources related to blogs on your campus.

Gentle reminder: Update all content highlighted in yellow to reflect your institution.

What is a Blog?

A blog (short for Web log) is a website that can be used to share ideas, resources, experiences, and even collaborate online. Essentially, they promote interaction and discussion by allowing readers to post comments on the page. Blogs can be created by anyone with Internet access and offer users with instant online publishing capabilities. Information posted to blogs is displayed in reverse chronological order (so that the newest post always appears first). They also support many media elements including text, hyperlinks, images, and video.

Some instructors may create blogs as a venue for online collaborative group work. They may also require students to create blogs for writing and reflection assignments. Blog usage makes students more active and responsible for their own learning, they help to create an online community, as well as provide opportunities for later analysis; Creating a blog is generally easy even for the novice user and most blog interfaces are similar to basic word processing applications making it simple to post information.

How to Choose a Blog Service

There are several free third party blog services available for use on the web. Listed below are a few popular blog services that are free and relatively easy to use:

- Blogger
- Edublogs
- Tumblr

Choosing a blog service can be challenging. The link below offers a Top 10 list detailing the considerations of each.

- Top 10 Free Online Blogging Platforms

Instructional Strategies & Best Practices

Below are some examples of how <Replace - Institution Name> faculty are currently using blogs:

<Replace with Institution blog examples>

Optional Further Reading

- 7 Things You Should Know About Blogs: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7006.pdf
- Some Uses of Blogs in Education: http://www.edtechpost.ca/gems/matrix2.gif
- Transcript for Blogs in Plain English
- Blogs in Plain English video by CommonCraft.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.