Blogging for teaching and learning

Piero Dametto (Cooloola Sunshine Coast Institute of TAFE) indicated that he uses blogs for student assessment in an IT course.

Penny Skerman and Rosemary Shanks of Central Queensland Institute of TAFE (Mackay Campus) have built a great blog for communication with their students who are spread out over 400,000 square miles. The focus is child care studies. I spent a bit of time looking through the blog archive - wow! They provide a superb example of blended learning - they use video-conferencing, face-to-face (they travel a lot), web-based video streaming (incorporating PowerPoint), print-based resources, learning guides, work placements and Cybertots (virtual child care centre from the Toolbox). Their blog, Childstudies Juggernaut, can be found at:
http://www.childcaremackay.blogspot.com/

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The Learning Technologies User Group (LTUG) provides a range of online workshops/webinars focused on blogging.

Workshop topics include Learn to Blog, Blog to Learn, Getting Up Close and Personal with Weblogs and Using Weblogs. The latter online workshop focuses on different possible uses of blogs in the educational context. It explores examples of possible uses and invites discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of teacher blogging, student blogging and class aggregation. Participants are invited to share their ideas and perspectives in this area and will leave the session equipped with strategies and knowledge in the application of blogging and aggregation in online education. You can check these workshops out here:
http://www.ltug.org/events.html

Anne Bartlett-Bragg, Executive Director of LTUG, conducted a PhD study on the use of blogs in teaching and has been using blogs in her own teaching since 2001. The results of her study are summarised in a recent ABC article:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1450106.htm