Blogs

Blogging (Source: Geralt, goo.gl/3huL6t, under CC0 Public Domain licence)

Blogs (a short form of the original term weblogs) are classic web 2.0 tools which allow users to share their thoughts, potentially globally, and receive feedback, again potentially from around the globe. Many major blogging platforms have app versions for mobile devices, so that blogs are also aligned to some extent with mobile learning.

Blogs are effectively online journals where you can post updates – which may be text-based but nowadays are often multimodal – as often as you wish. A blog can thus function as a reflective diary but it can also be the centrepiece of a conversation, since readers can leave comments for the blog’s author and each other, forging connections and community around topics of mutual interest. Advantages for students include the fact that they are crafting their communications for a wider audience – whether the entire internet on a public blog, or a more restricted group of class peers on a private class blog – and can receive feedback, thus co-constructing knowledge with others as they develop their online personas. Blogs are also commonly ‘in conversation’ with one another, as bloggers link to and comment on each other’s ideas.

For a light-hearted introduction to the principles underpinning blogs, see the Common Craft video Blogs in Plain English. For further information on the use of blogs in education, see the following guides, many of them extracted from The Edublogger:

> Schools focus:

• • 7 Benefits to Blogging in the Classroom (Victoria/Teach Starter, 2018)
  • Why Teachers and Students Should Blog (Kathleen Morris/Primary Tech, 2018)
  • 10 Ways to Introduce Your Students to Blogging (Kathleen Morris/The Edublogger, 2019)
  • 10 Elements of a Quality Blog Post (Kathleen Morris/The Edublogger, 2020)
  • 10 Classroom Blogging Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them) (Kathleen Morris/The Edublogger, 2021)
  • Getting Started with Blogging (video) (John Spencer, 2021)

> University/college focus:

• • Assessing with Blogs (UNSW, 2022)
  • Blog, Wiki or Forum – Which Should You Use? (UNSW, 2023)
  • Using Blogs in the Classroom (University of Michigan, n.d.)

Basic blogs can be quickly and easily set up at no cost, though many blogging services now work on a freemium model where basic functionality is available for free, but users pay for more advanced functionality. Well-known blog hosting services include Blogger, Edublogs, LiveJournal, WordPress.com (a freemium service which hosts your blog) and WordPress.org (where the WordPress software is available for free but you need to host your own blog). Typepad is a paid blogging service. A popular variation on the basic blogging idea is the multimedia-oriented Tumblr. There are a number of blogging and diary apps available in Google Play, Apple’s App Store, and other app stores; for a comprehensive list, see Common Sense Media’s Journal Apps, Online Diaries, and Digital Scrapbooks. Another related service is the recently popular Substack, which allows the publication (and monetisation) of newsletters.

While older blogging projects by students can easily be found on the web, newer projects with school-level learners are not so readily found because many blogs have now been set up as password-protected sites and/or integrated into LMSs or other institutional platforms which are not publicly accessible. This has been done in order to protect students’ identities and safeguard them from inappropriate interactions and comments, though in fact it is also possible to hide students’ identities on public blogs by removing identifying information, and to wholly or partially disable public commenting options. If you’re looking for current examples of publicly available student blogs, check out the Edublogger’s List of Class Blogs from Around the World.

Blogs are sometimes used by educators as part of collaborative online international learning (COIL) or virtual exchange (VE) initiatives to help their students build intercultural skills as they interact with peers from different parts of the world, whether in a lingua franca, or in a bilingual mode where students are learning each other’s languages. The Quadblogging service, established in 2011 in the UK, set up 4-way blogging collaborations between schools, and over time became well-known for supporting teachers in finding appropriate partner schools around the world (for an introduction to the underpinning principles, see Linda Yollis’s video What is QuadBlogging?.). Although this service is currenty unavailable, a similar organisational format could be used by teachers on any blogging platform, subject to identifying appropriate colleagues and classes in other countries.

If you’re looking for examples of blogs for educators, check out the 100 Best Education Blogs for Educators and Teachers (FeedSpot) or What Are the Best Education Blogs for Teachers? (TeachThought). For other relevant examples, take a look at Mark Pegrum’s E-language Conference Blog, or the excerpts on the Blogs to follow page of this website. You might also like to check out Ronnie Burt, Sue Waters, Karen Walsh and Kathleen Morris’s guide for educators, 50 Topics to Inspire Educators to Blog.

Last update: October 2024.