LostInTechnology Interviews Sue Waters

Posted on 13. May, 2009 by srikanth in Internet Tools, Miscellaneous

About Edublogs

edublogs logo Edublogs hosts more than 300,000 blogs for teachers, students, researchers, professors and anyone and everyone else involved in education. Edublogs are completely free, and come with 20MB of free upload space (easily extended to 5 GB as a Supporter) and a heap of great f eatures. You can even check out a video introduction to Edublogs here.

The Q & A

How did it all start? And why Edublogs?

Edublogs was founded by James in July, 2005. At the time he was an academic supporting online education at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. His goal was to get people out of the closed, walled environments of Learning Management systems (LMS) (such as WebCT and BlackBoard) and open up their learning by means of blogging.

He started initially by setting up blogs for people using individual WordPress installs. When the opportunity arose to offer people the ability to set up blogs all by themselves came along he set up Edublogs.org using a domain name he already owned.

Do you think blogging for campus will change the way students learn?

Done well blogging changes the way students learn. Blogging opens them up to a global audience creating authentic learning opportunities; this engages and motivates the students to want to learn more. Most educators use hit counters like ClustrMaps on blogs so students see a visual representation of their global audience.

It’s really hard to explain how blogging changes the learning unless you have experienced it yourself. Part of the learning happens while writing posts and rest is from commenting on their own posts and other bloggers posts.

Writing blog posts increases reading, writing and digital literacy skills while also making the student reflect more deeply on the information they are sharing. Comments by both the student and other commenters makes each reflect on aspects that they hadn’t considered.

Blogging provides greater ability to exchange ideas, viewpoints and thoughts compared to face-to-face situations and LMS environments. It also gives greater insight into who the students really are ‘as individuals’; their interests, opinions and beliefs. Through blogging students can now easily exchange ideas with people such as writers, journalists, University professors, scientists where once this wasn’t possible.

Digital literacy skills gained from blogging provide students’ skills that help them in their future careers. Common misconceptions are that students: are already using Web 2.0 tools; want to use the Web 2.0 tools; and are better at using technology than teachers. Reality is most students are have limited digital literacy skills and tend to be good at using technology in areas that interest them. For example, might be really good at playing World of Warcraft or using Facebook.

Do you see any major functional changes in schools and universities using Edublogs?

As schools and universities use Edublogs you see a shift away from LMS environments to blogging and using Web 2.0 tools with their students. LMS environments limit information exchange to other students and teachers from the course and do very little to increase digital literacy skills.

How is Edublogs different from other blog providers?

Edublogs has been specifically set up to provide blogs for anyone involved in education and is powered with WordPress. Edublogs.org now hosts over 300,000 blogs as well as a large number of blogs on Edublogs Campus.

Our highly qualified team of WordPress MU technical staff spends considerable (ongoing) time developing and customizing our software to meet the needs of the educational community. Our blogs have features that aren’t included in standard WordPress blogs.

Through Edublogs Campus we provide a service and support for a large number of clients ranging from big Universities such as Cornell University, school districts, schools through to individual classroom teachers.

Edublogs focus is providing good customer service and helping the educational community. For example, The Edubloggerand Edublogs Free Live Web Events purpose is to share tips, tricks, ideas and help to the educational community regardless of if they are Edublogs users.

How has the feedback from users been?

Feedback on blogging is best answered by student response from last year’s student blogging competition. You can read their response on What Has The Student Blogging Competition Meant To YOU?

Are there any other interesting projects you are working on?

Other interesting project is a really hard question. Ideas of projects are always happening my biggest challenge is time constraints.

Currently I’m working with Sue Wyatt to support the Student Blogging. Each week students are given a new blogging task to complete; each designed to encourage connections with students in other countries while improving their blogging skills. There are over 15 class blogs, 1000 students and more than 150 student blogs (aged from 6 to 18 years) from 13 countries participating in this challenge.

The other major project I’m working on is Edublogs Free Live Web Events. Elluminate has agreed to be a Community Partner with Edublogs; as a result we have access to a free 200 seat Elluminate room. Our goal is to offer free live web events to support the education community with session topics ranging from different aspects of blogging to using a range of web technologies. As part of expanding the program I’m trying to source presenters from a range of different time zones as I want it to be an inclusive to educators in all regions.

Meanwhile I’m also considering other projects such as the Comment Challenge which we were involved with last year as users have requested it is offered again this year. We also work hard assisting any educator regardless of whether they are Edublogs users to connect with each other through our regularly updated “Check out Class Blogs” and “Skype Other Classrooms”.

The LosInTechnology Team thanks Sue Waters for her valuable time and sharing inspiring thoughts about digital media, blogs and e-learning.

By Srikanth AD, see his Blog or follow him on Twitter for more information.

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One Response to “LostInTechnology Interviews Sue Waters”

JP.Thompson

13. May, 2009

Very cool. I think blogging has caused me to read more and (hopefully) write better, but also has help with critical thinking. Writing original content should cause a concerned person to think more deeply about a topic and to research it more. You can almost become an expert in a topic if you research and write about that topic enough.

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