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Blogging has been adopted by researchers, teachers and students in education field after the rise of blogging. According to blog expert, John Hiler (2002), he mentions that the blog has the capacity to involve people in ‘collaborative activity, knowledge sharing, reflection and debate, where complex and expensive technology has failed’ (Williams and Jacobs 2004) to provide. Blogs are classified in accordance with their content; the blogs emerging in education discipline is known as EduBlogs (Hiler 2002).
There are different types of education blogging with multiple integrations of media. For examples, text, images, audio and even video blogging.
Learning through audio or having digital audio is not a new concept. As for integrating audio into the blog while being educated has been recognised as a new concept. Teachers, instructional designers and students are now provided the facilities to access this dimension as producers to do voice over IP (VoIP) (Lamb 2004).
It is an expensive investment with the aim of recording best quality of audio, SkypeCasting, however, is providing a cheap and easy way for Skype users to record audio (Henshall 2004; Lamb 2004).
Video blog, also called vlog is a blog that used video rather than text or audio as its primary media source. There are many types of vlogs that are still accompanied by text, still images, and even include metadata. Digital video editing software allows videobloggers to edit and integrate audio into the video clip (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2005).
For faculty and students, videoblog represents a ‘new, relatively untested instructional technology tool’ (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2005) that is beginning to incorporate into their collaborative research and class activities; some disciplines even find videoblogs fitting their needs as the tool for creating videoblogs are becoming more common and less expensive. Tools such as camera-capable cell phones, digital cameras and webcams are capable to record short video sequences and publish the video clips to the blog. Academic institutions can make videoblogs for recording lectures, special events, e-portfolios and presentations (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiativ 2005).
Moblogging is short form for mobile blogging. A moblog (mobile weblog) contains subjects that are posted up using a mobile phones or PDAs (Nokia 2005).
Harvard Law School has a blog named ‘Weblogs at Harvard Law’ hosted by Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Dave Winer is the main influence for the Harvard Law Weblog project; he has started to educate about weblogs while debugging his Manila software since his arrival at Silicon Valley (Potier 2003).
For the Berkman Center, Harvard Law School is the first blogging initiative at a major educational institution. The Berkman Center held a conference in November 2002 entitled: ‘What Is Harvard’s Digital Identity?’ In this conference, Provost Steven Hyman challenged the assembled deans, faculty members, and administrators to connect the Internet to build intellectual bridges that would facilitate the flow of information and ideas between the University’s disparate schools and centers (Potier 2003; Williams and Jacobs 2004).
In 1999, the Brisbane Graduate School of Business (BGSB) introduced a new MBA course with more flexible and choices, including improved services such as study guides and online learning and teaching (OLT) sites for each course unit. Due to the dissatisfactory of the current environment, the new media tool – blog was introduced in order to satisfy the participation levels that could not be fulfilled in discussion forums. Therefore, blog trial was tested on students from two course units (William and Jacobs 2004).
The BGSB encouraged the students by allowing them to earn five marks participation marks if they participate in the blog trial. After participating, both participants and non-participants were asked to answer questionnaires. Most of the students agree that blog should be incorporated into their studies (Williams and Jacobs 2004).
EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. 2005. 7 Things You Should Know About Videoblogging. EDUCAUSE. http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7005.pdf (accessed October 8, 2005).
Henshall, S. 2004. Skype + Podcast Recorder = SkypeCasters. http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2004/12/skype_podcast_r.php (accessed October 9, 2005).
Hiler, J. 2002. Blogs as Disruptive Tech: How weblogs are flying under the radar of the content management giants. http://www.webcrimson.com/ourstories/blogsdisruptivetech.htm (accessed October 8, 2005).
Lamb, B. 2004. The Online Classroom is About to Become a Noisier Place?? Wired (And Wireless) for Sound: Audioblogging, Podcasting and Education. UBS’s E-Strategy Update. http://www.e-strategy.ubc.ca/news/update0412/0412-podcasting.html (accessed October 8, 2005).
Nokia. 2005. Guide to Moblogging. http://europe.nokia.com/BaseProject/Sites/NOKIA_MAIN_18022/CDA/ApplicationTemplates/About_Nokia/Content/_Static_Files/moblogbackgrounder.pdf (accessed October 9, 2005).
Potier, B. 2003. Berkman Center Fellow Dave Winer Wants to Get Harvard Blogging. Harvard Gazette, April 17, 2003. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/04.17/13-blogging.html (accessed August 5, 2005).
Williams, J. B. and J. Jacobs. 2004. Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australiasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20 (2), 232-247.
Rebecca Ngok 16:29, 27 Oct 2005 (EST)
