Using Blogger to get teachers started with e-learning. Guest contribution from Keith Burnett.

Mark Berthelemy sounds a prudent note of caution about using 'free stuff' in his recent guest contribution. I understand the concerns, but I would add that these systems have enabled some colleagues to get started with small practical projects, and these projects have lead to greater use of our College's VLE.

I work in an adult learning context, and many of our students attend college once a week in the evening or weekend. Many students now have access to the Web outside college, and those that don't often make use of the College drop in facilities. Simple class blogs can be used to post summaries of key points, exercises, links to Web pages of value, and to provide a sense of continuity and encourage engagement with the material.

This academic year, I have been suggesting the Blogger system as being easy to set up, flexible to administer with good control over comments, and allowing blogging by e-mail. A one hour training session [ pdf, 1.3 MB ]  has been repeated a couple of times, and colleagues have seen the benefit of spending half an hour a week posting links and summaries. Students appreciate the effort and make use of the pages.

Fiona Williams posts a blog for Chartered Institute of Management Accounting students at the College, and has run training sessions on blogger in her role as an e-guide in the Finance and Accounting curriculum area. Fiona runs this page as a multi-author blog and students from different classes will use the page for hints, tips and links. The manager in the area, Sian Houseago, is building on the success of the blogs by piloting Moodle courses for students on Association Accounting Technicians programmes. I have found that colleagues who have taken ownership of a simple blog page and who have kept that page fresh and relevant are open to using e-learning in a more sophisticated way using some of the tools that Mark describes.

In conclusion, I can't resist linking to a couple of podcasts and my favourite free Web services:

• 5 minutes on Carbonyls by David Cox [ 2 MB, mp3 ] provided for AS Chemistry students to pop on their MP3 players;
• 4 minutes on Blogs in education [ 1.6 MB, mp3 ];
• ScanR - image whiteboards with your phone camera and have the results delivered as a PDF file. This service actually does work rather well. There is no online storage of your work - the transaction is sending and receiving an e-mail.

About the author: Keith Burnett works as a Maths teacher and ILT development co-ordinator at Sutton Coldfield College. He can be contacted at keithb 'AT' bodmas.org.

Comments

[Ric Jensen, PhD]

Along these same lines, the 2006 Higher Education Blog Conference also included some great presentations about how blogs can be utilized to improve the teaching of college students.
I gave a presentation there about how blogs can be used to increase the effectiveness of teaching distance education courses using Blackboard software.

Link to my presentation and comments made in response.

Link to the conference.