This week we wrap our series, in which we’ve been learning about many of the ways in which blogs are being used in today’s educational institutions.
As promised last week, this final post in our series will examine blogging that focuses on education technology, as practiced by education and instructional technologists and educators in general.
First, a brief recap of the types of educational blogging we’ve already examined in this series. We started by looking at teachers blogging on their own, then followed with ’classroom blogging‘, moved on to individual student blogging, and this bought us to last week when we looked at examples of blogging by educational administrators.
Like the above types of blogging, the use of blogs to share experiences and insights into various education technnologies has been growing steadily since the late 90′s and early 00′s. An Internet search for “education technology blogs” or similarly worded phrases will deliver hundreds of relevant results. With their high level of technological prowess, it shouldn’t be surprising that there a good number of these types of bloggers who have created very popular, highly trafficked web sites.
Here’s some examples of Ed Tech blogs. I’ve provided a mix of blogs from both teachers and technologists, since these two types of professionals are the source of the majority of education technology blogging.
Ideas and Thoughts: As noted on his site’s About page, Dean Shareski is a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada, who specializes in the use of technology in the classroom, and holds a Masters of Education in Communications and Technology through the University of Saskatchewan. This blog’s tagline (hard to read in the image below) is, “relevant, engaging, authentic learning”.
FreeTech4Teachers: Teacher Richard Byrne publishes this highly popular site, where he provides “Free Resources and Lesson Plans for Teaching With Technology”. One of my favorite things about his posts is that he makes a point of providing some “Applications for Education” with each post.
Transparent Learning: Bethany Smith is an Instructional Technologist working in Raleigh, North Carolina, and actually has a few blogs. I wanted to include “Transparent Learning” as an example here because it is a nice sort of typical example, in the best sense. Bethany shares her experiences with, and ideas about, education and technology in thoughtful posts, with no predetermined frequency. This sort of free form but meaningful blogging is in many ways the essence of what a ‘binary log‘ is intended to be.
Dangerously!Irrelevant: “Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University. He also is the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators”. He produces a good deal of content, on this site and elsewhere. Scott was also one of the minds behind the well known “Did You Know? (Shift Happens)” YouTube videos.
I think this is a great set of examples of current education technology blogging. Of course, I’d be somewhat remiss if I didn’t point out that the blog you are reading right now is certainly a qualified example of education technology blogging as well!
Next
As a kind of logical addendum to this series, I’ll be publishing a post that discusses a few easy ways for educators or students to get started with blogging.
I think the five categories that we’ve covered are the main sources of blogging in education today, but there are surely other types of blogging going on out there in the educational blogosphere. Feel free to comment and mention any other blogs or types of blogging that you would like to bring to light. Thanks!
Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Blogging In Education Today (a multipart series)
Blogging in Education Today (part 2 – Classroom Blogging)
Blogging in Education Today (part 3 – Student Blogging)
Blogging in Education Today (part 4 – Administrator’s Blogs)
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Call To Action – Comment on the Gainful Employment regulations before time runs out (Sep 9)
by K. Walsh on September 1, 2010
The last date for public comment on these perplexing regulations (slated to become law on Nov. 1) is coming fast!
The only soapbox I tend to hop on here is the one where I advocate for education technology, but these new regulations are seriously disconcerting and I just have to weigh in, and reach out to readers.
The Gainful Employment regulations are aimed at for-profit career colleges (“those engaged in training leading to gainful employment”) and so much about these regulations is simply unfair, and rather troubling. Not only are they likely to make education less attainable for many low income and minority students, but the regulations don’t appear to allow for any sort of due process.
The intent of the regulations is to limit or deny Title IV aid (Pell grants, loans, etc.) to students in schools that have “higher than normal” default rates, along with other harmful punitive measures, including forced enrollment limits. This may very well make sense for some unscrupulous educational institutions out there, but these regulations fail to take into consideration things like a school’s graduation or placement rates, students who postpone paying loans while they continue their education, or a long list of other highly relevant factors. There is a clear need to more carefully consider the impact this can have on many students across the country, who should not be made to suffer due to the actions of the few.
To provide additional information and clarity, here are a few insightful resources on the subject:
Please take a moment right now to click here and submit your comments, or a preformatted letter, to the DoE. Remember, the government’s final period for input from the public on this legislation (presently scheduled to become law on Nov. 1) closes on September 9. We can be heard and we can make a difference. Thanks!
For more on this issue, please visit: http://gainfulemployment.wordpress.com/
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