December 2005 — Features
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Why Blog?
Who Blogs?
Along with the term “blog” came a number of different usages, including
the noun (common, not proper) blogger: one who blogs. According to the 2005
study, The State of Blogging by the Pew Internet & American Life Project
(www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp),
8 million American adults say they have created blogs. Blog readership jumped
58 percent in 2004 and now stands at 27 percent of Internet users. Still, the
study says, 62 percent of Internet users do not know what a blog is.
Yet other numbers indicate that blogging is becoming more widespread. Technorati
(www.technorati.com),
an online company that calls itself “the authority on what’s going
on in the world of Web logs,” says it is currently tracking 16.9 million
sites and 1.5 billion links. (At least it did when this entry was written; odds
are it’s gone up since.)
—posted on Friday, December 2, 2005 @ 2:23 pm
To Blog or Not to Blog?
Is the blogging craze relevant to educators? With a little imagination, it can
be made to be, particularly as a way to strengthen the home-school connection.
Many schools are using blogs to reach out to parents and the community with
consistently updated information on school events and activities. In other instances,
the traditional student “journaling” that is used to build writing
skills is now being conducted online (and sometimes in public) via student blogs.
Resources for helping decide if blogging will help your school meet its communications or instructional goals are beginning to become available all over the Internet. Will Richardson, the supervisor of Instructional Technology and Communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, NJ, maintains www.weblogg-ed.com, a Web site dedicated to discussing the use of Web logs in education.
Another resource, online at awd.cl.uh.edu/blog,
which was developed by University Computing & Telecommunications at the
University of Houston-Clear Lake (TX), offers tips for using Web logs in K-12
and college and university classrooms, with links to relevant articles and exemplary
blogs.
—posted on Saturday, December 3, 2005 @ 5:01 pm
